Jamie Coville's MP3 Files

Comics Arts Conference: Scholars Lost and Found (47:14, 42.2mb)
On this panel was Carol Tilley and Brad Ricca. Brad start off talking about an academic paper done in 1942 by Paul Cassidy, who was also an artist at the Siegel and Shuster shop and was assisting/ghosting
Joe Shuster in drawing Superman comics. The paper was about the use of Ghost Artists. He conducted a questionnaire about the use of ghost artists in the industry and wrote about his own experience. Carol talked
about a few other early academic papers she's come across. One from 1932 about kids reading Sunday Comic strips, 1933 on comic strips artists and their level of art training, 1938 on comics as children's literature
and along the way also put together circulation figures of all Sunday Comic strips. The last two papers talked about was a 1942 one about Kids understanding editorial cartoons and a 1949 paper about comic book
sales figures between 1935 and 1949. It was done by Charles Cridland who was the treasurer of comic book publisher David Mckay. He reveals his own companies numbers and gives estimates for his competitors.

Kevin Nowlan Spotlight (48:38, 44.5mb)
Jai Nitz interviews Kevin Nowlan after he receives an Inkpot award. They talked about how they two met and their friendship, there was a slide show of Kevin's work and discussed it. Among the topics discussed was
his attention to detail, his breaking into comics with a Dr. Strange fill in under Al Milgrom, working on Marvel Fanfare, his colouring work, the hate mail generated when he did Defenders in a different style,
Bruce Timm being influenced by him - which in turn was used for Batman: The Animated Series and other Bruce Tim cartoon series and movies, Nowlan inking Joe Quesada, a Batman story that was killed, his Superman
covers and a new Conan story they are doing together.

Skottie Young Spotlight (55:08, 50.4mb)
Moderating this panel was Jim Viscardi. Among the topics discussed were his desire to draw and when he wanted to do it for a living, his influences, his early non-comics jobs, his run on Human Torch, finding his
boundaries artistically, how drawing for animation changed his work, The Wizard of Oz, his favourite character to draw, the transition to writing, his upcoming creator owned book for Image, meeting Todd McFarlane
and doing a Spawn cover.

Comic Con How To: Art Theft and the Law (51:29, 47.1mb)
On this panel was law professor Jack Lerner, Deviant Art's Josh Wattles and creator DJ Welch. Josh Wattles announced that Deviant Art is very aware of Art Theft being a problem for its users and announced
Deviantart.com/arttheft as a new resource in how to combat it. They explained the differences between Art Theft, Plagiarism, Copyright Infringement,
Tracing, Copy/Mimicking, Appropriation, Fair Use and Resolving Disputes. DJ Welch talked about having his art used without his permission and how his fans were a big help in combating that. They also discussed
Tumblr. As requested, the Q&A portion of this panel was not recorded so that artists asking about their specific situations could speak freely.

Comics Journalism: It's about Ethics in Comics Journalism (51:32, 47.1mb)
On the panel was Heidi MacDonald, Donna Dickens, James Viscardi, Casey Gilly, Joe Ilidge and Brett Schenker. The panel was moderated by Jeff Trexler. Jeff asked the question if neutral Comic reporting is dead?
The group spoke about doing news from a personal point of view vs a straight reporting of the facts. They also talked about social media controversies, if they have any limits to what they report on, the comments
they get from their readers and diversity in comics.

Will Eisner: The Champion of the Graphic Novel (51:11, 46.8mb)
This panel consisted of Paul Levitz, Jeff Smith, Sergio Aragonés, Denis Kitchen and Danny Fingeroth. Paul asked the group if Eisner's series of Graphic Novels is a more important influence on the comics industry
than the Spirit, the group discussed Will's desire for respect for both himself and the comics medium. They said Will treated everybody as equals. Jeff Smith told a few funny stories about Will, they also talked
about Burne Hogarth and answered questions about how Will's Graphic Novels did when they first came out and the difficulty for the market to rack and sell them.

The Twisted Root of Comics (49:57, 45.7mb)
On the panel were Nicky Wheeler-Nicholson, Michael Uslan, Danny Fingeroth, Gerard Jones and Brad Ricca. Nicky had a slide show of pictures and the panellists jumped into identifying the places and people. The group
talked about how there was a political crack down on the 'Spicy' books which drove some of the publishers into doing comic books. At the same time pulp books publishers were also getting into comic books too.
Michael Uslan told a funny origin story of how Little Archie came about from a poker game among the publishers. They talked about how the early comic publishers knew each other, worked together and hung out
socially. They discussed how the titles of some of the pulps and spicy books were used for comics. Nicky said the Major wanted to originally do comic strip adaptations of children's literature. They discussed how
the early Superman & Batman characters borrowed/swiped from pulp characters. Nicky explained why the Major used original material for New Fun. They debated among themselves about the Superman discovery story and
there is suspicion that the official story is not accurate. The group revealed information about The Major's being forced out of what would become DC comics and it's possible relation to Superman.

Bob Layton Spotlight (46:39, 42.7mb)
Bob Layton is interviewed by Michael Uslan. They first discussed their early friendship, Bob receiving a standing ovation at Hall H on an Iron Man panel, the group of comic creators to come out of Indiana and
contributed to Bobs CPL fanzine, which included Roger Stern, John Byrne, Roger Slifer, Steven Grant (who was in the audience) and others. They talked about the group also doing Charlton's fanzine and then Bob being
Wally Wood's assistant and later Dick Giordano's. Bob spoke passionately about Dick and how he was a father figure to him and really helped him out when he was young. He also spoke of being there with Dick during
his last days. Michael Uslan told a story about how he met a young Sam Ramni at a comic convention that Bob put on in 1975. Bob told the story of how he broke into Marvel, how he went to DC and how he convinced
David Michelinie to come over to Marvel with him and work on Iron Man. Bob revealed that Iron Man was slated for cancelation and how he and David saved it from cancellation. The Demon in the Bottle story was brought
up. Bob also said what happened to inker Jack Able after his stroke affected him and his career. Valiant Comics and Future Comics were also discussed about.

MARCH with Congressman John Lewis (57:04, 52.2mb)
An introduction was done by Leigh Walton and on the panel was Congressman John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powel. After the introduction Lewis gave a powerful speech about getting into 'good' trouble. He spoke
about his youth raising chickens on a farm and preaching to them. He also spoke about the movement for equal rights, the fight against white and coloured only areas and called on the youth to learn the tactics
and use them towards non-violent progress. Andrew talked about his pestering John to write a comic. He revealed that he learned that Martin Luther King had edited the Martin Luther King comic that inspired this
comic. They discussed the success of getting March in schools and teachers using it to teach children this part of American history. There was also talk of the need for free post-secondary education, raising of
the minimum wage, removal of voting restrictions, the confederate flag and other topics. Nate spoke about them making the book as historically accurate as possible so that it couldn't be challenged on that ground
in schools and said they were even able to fill in some gaps of history through the process of making this book. He spoke about their process of making this book and the effects it's had on him and his kids.

Irwin Hasen Tribute (51:23, 47mb)
On this panel was Danny Fingeroth, Chelle Mayer, David Armstrong, Arie Kaplan, Michael Uslan and coming in late was Jim Salicrup. David started off about talking about a story about Irwin and Carmine Infantino.
The entire panel told their story about meeting Irwin for the first time. They dicussed his early work and creating Wildcat. A video of a Jules Feiffer interview regarding Irwin was played. David Armstrong explained
the mutual admiration Irwin and Tooth had for each other with Tooth saying Irwin was a major influence on him. The group also talked about Irwin getting into the Will Esiner Hall of Fame and receiving the Award at
New York Comic Con. Towards the end, the group shared stories of Irwin.

The Best and Worst Manga of 2015 (46:50, 42.8mb)
Moderated by Deb Aoki on the panel was David Brothers, Brigid Alverson, Eva Volin and Christopher Butcher. After introductions the group started with discussing their picks for the Best New Books for Kids and Teens,
Best New Books for Adults, Best Continuing Books for Kids and Best Continuing Books for Adults. They then discussed the Worst Manga for any age, Underrated but Great Manga, their most Anticipated New Manga and their
Most Wanted Manga.

The Annual Jack Kirby Tribute Panel (1:04:05, 58.6mb)
Mark Evanier, J. David Spurlock, Marv Wolfman, Rob Liefeld and Paul S Levine discussed Jack Kirby. Mark started off with getting people in the audience to make their new announcements relating to Kirby's work.
Mark then talked about the lawsuit being over and he, Jack's family and he feels, Jack and Roz would be very happy with the settlement. Mark said he was at the first X-men movie with Stan Lee and stayed until the
very end and was very angry that Jack's name was in very small type at the end of the film and has refused to watch Marvel films since. Mark also said that during his time of hearing Jacks version of events and
talking with many other people who were at Marvel at the time (Steve Ditko, Wally Wood, Dick Ayers, Stan Lee, etc..) he is convinced that Jack's version of events is accurate and Jack was an honest man who wasn't
trying to take credit for thing he did not do. Rob Liefeld talked about meeting Jack, his love of Jack and doing Phantom Force. Mark said Jack and Roz was very happy for the large amount of money they received from
Image for that work and it meant more to them than many tributes given to them in other non-monetary ways. Mark and Spurlock spoke of the mutual respect that Kirby and Wood had for each other and Spurlock confirmed Jack's
honesty. Spurlock spoke about Wally Wood, saying he left around the same time Ditko did and felt Jack would have left too if he wasn't blacklisted at DC and had a family to feed. Mark said Jack and Wood would keep in
touch after Wood left Marvel and encouraged him in his projects. Marv Wolfman talked about meeting Jack as a kid and his love of Kamandi. Everybody (Except Paul Levine) spoke about the one comic they thought that
best represented Jack Kirby. Rob in particular mentioned the Galactus Saga in Fantastic Four. He also told a story about how Jim Valentino, when the two had a studio together, ordered Rob to read FF 1 - 100, which
he did and was very thankful for. He said earlier in his career he was trying to draw like George Perez, but would later switch to Jack.

From Comics to Animation (55:32, 50.8mb)
Moderator Mark Waid talks with Jhonen Vasquez, Jill Thompson, Reginald Hudlin, Michael DeForge, Jerry Beck and eventually Lalo Alcaraz who came in a bit late. Jerry Beck talked a bit about the early relationship
between comics and animation going back to Windsor McKay. The group discussed how working in one field influenced their work in the other. Jill Thompson told us about the history of her Scary Godmother book first
being adapted into a play and then into animation. The group discussed dealing with decisions made from higher ups and how frustrating they are and Reginald talked about the view point from the executive position.
Reginald also spoke about how the Black Panther cartoon came about. Lalo spoke of his transition into animation and how he now had a new found appreciation for cartoonists. Jhonen said he taking Invader Zim back
into comics and it's strange how people want the character to suddenly go 'dark' and be different than his animation personality. Regarding comics and animation Michael said what he liked about both formats. Jerry expressed that we are currently in a golden age for comic creators working in animation. Jill expressed that
because of new software, one doesn't need to know as much about animation in order to create a cartoon. There was also an audience Q&A where the panel answered questions on working in other mediums, motion comics and
pitching projects.

Chip Zdarsky: A Life (47:24, 43.4mb)
Chip Zdarsky is interviewed by Juliette Capra. Among the topics of Chips career were talked about are his art school, his early self published books Monster Cops and Prison Funnies, his starting a studio with
Kagan Mcleod and Cameron Stewart, real people appearing in his comics and him appearing in Marvel comics, the letters page in Sex Criminals, Jughead, working within a shared universe, Sex Criminals #11 and the
random sketch covers, how Sex Criminals came about, Mark Waid made a surprise appearance to ask Chip what's his favourite Justice Society of America character is, Chip's dream project at Marvel, what he can get away
with while writing for Marvel, Sex Criminals translated into other languages, Comixology not being able to offer #3 because of Apple restrictions, his working for the National Post newspaper - particularly the
Todd Diamond video skits and running for Mayor of Toronto. There was constant laughter from the audience throughout this panel.

Pro vs. Fan Trivia Match (44:28, 40.7mb)
Moderated by Derek McCaw. The Fan side is Tom Galloway, Peter S. Svensson and David Oakes. The Pro side is Len Wein, Anthony Tollin and Mark Waid. The questions range from 1956 to 1985 and are about The Joker,
The Spectre, Hydra, The X-Men, Justice Society of America, Robin, Catwoman, Captain America, Shazam/Captain Marvel, Metamorpho, Dr. Fate and the Elongated Man.

Note: Friday May 8th was Librarian & Educator day. For the general public TCAF was May 9-10th.

Protecting Comics: Graphic Novel Challenges in Today's Libraries (54:27, 48.9mb)
Presented by Charles Brownstein of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Charles starts off with a small history of how comics became thought of as being only for children. He then gave some statistics of Challenged and
Banned Graphic Novels in both Canada and the US. He explained the path to censorship, why people try to ban comics, a list of top challenged books in both countries, the book challenges they are dealing with right
now (This One Summer, Palomar, The Graveyard Book, Bone, Fun Home & Persepolis), how libraries can cope with challengers, managing the challenges and the resources available. They did a Q & A with the audience
and addressed issues with cultural differences, particularly with European views on nudity books marked for children, older books with offensive depictions of race and how to respond to that.

Do it yourself Comic Con (1:02:45, 57.4mb)
This panel had Eva Volin, Liz Coates (Librarians) and Sven Larsen (Papercutz) talk about doing Comic Cons within a Library. Eva and Liz spoke about their Comic Con like events they held at their Libraries,
with very little in ways of staff or money. Eva talked about first deciding who the convention is for in terms of demographics, she recommended partnering with the local comic book store for advice and assistance.
She spoke of passive programming that can be done and gave examples, getting free comics, getting creators to visit via Skype, finding people in the community who can be a resource and
borrowing ideas from other events, she also said afterwards it's good to promote the event by putting up pictures of it as it helps affirm it's success and helps it grow. Liz talked about the recent King Con
even in Kingston, ON. She talked about the programming, funding, partnering with local stores, challenges she faced and the creators she was able to bring in. Sven spoke about
helping these events from the publisher side. He said publishers are willing to give free stuff to help the event, but not likely books as they are trying to sell them. He said you may not get publishers
co-operation on getting creators to go to the events because they want the creator working on their books so he recommended going to the creators themselves. He also gave some advice about dealing with
publishers, saying not all publishers are equal when it comes to supporting these types of events. He advised in when you contact them and what information you should give the publisher about your show.
Charles Brownstein came up and talked about how CBLDF is putting together of resources of creators who are willing to do Library visits. Sven also suggested using local publishers to assist with the show.
There was Q&A and among the topics were School Libraries doing similar type events, how to approach your supervisor with the idea and having your paperwork ready in terms of by-laws and permits.

Big Comics Q&A: Classrooms (52:46, 48.3mb)
On this panel was Leslie Holwerda and Glen Downey. Leslie talked about introducing comic activities through her Library classes. Kids love using comics to learn and it shows the popularity of Graphic Novels beyond
circulation numbers. Among the things her lessons include is having kids find particular things within the comics, she gave 3 Canadian Graphic Novels that she uses and she has the kids find things within the comic, discussion
questions, assessment opportunities and feedback. She also talked about a Superhero Battle program that kids were excited for. She had the kids read just beyond the white male heroes for diversity. Glen Downey spoke
about 3 principals for Comics in the Classroom, Tradition, Vocabulary and Applying what they learn. On Tradition he talks about the history of the comic form from Cave Paintings to today. He says this is important
as it gives the art form legitimacy and helps make the medium as important as Literature and Art. He says that some people see Comics as a part of just literature which he thinks is limiting and not fully accurate.
He says vocabulary is important because kids will talk about comics in the same way they will books and are not able to express what they are seeing. He says we should teach the terms (GNs and Comics) and their
conflict. Doug also explained how studying comics helps kids with their writing.

Book Talk: Diverse Graphic Novels (57:06, 52.2mb)
The presenter was Andrew Woodrow-Butcher. Along with him were creators Tory Woollcott (Mirror Mind), Kat Verhoeven (Towerkind) and Beguiling Employee Rebecca Scoble. Both Tory and Kat talked about their books and
what makes them different. Rebecca discussed Mahou Josei Chumaka and Offbeat, two books who feature diverse characters. Andrew then talked about a number of books including, Luz, Hidden, Where Babies Comic From,
Lola, Drama, Rainy Day Recess, Kevin Keller, El Deafo, A Game For Swallows, Adventure Time, The Bravest Warrior, Runaways, A Graphic Guide adventure series and many others. He also gave reasons for each one and
usually their target age groups.

TCAF 2015 Kick-Off Event: D&Q 25! (1:13:15, 67mb)
Chris Butcher started off the kick-off event and gave thanks to various people who help put the convention together. He talked about his first exposure to Drawn and Quarterly comics when he was young and working
for a different retailer. He also talked about the company's growth. Chris Oliveros came up and spoke about TCAF, how important they are and how they've supported the company. Then the panel started with Sean
Rogers interviewing an all star line up of Jillian Tamaki, Jason Lutes, Seth, Adrian Tomine and Lynda Barry. The group first talked about their latest books, then went into when they joined Drawn and Quarterly.
Seth gave his early history with the company and his first impressions of Charles, Jillian spoke of the sense of community with the publisher, Adrian said he loved the D & Q line and wanted to be a part of it,
Jason talked about his coming out of art school, not really sure of what to do with himself, interning at Fantagraphics and finding the indy comics scene to be very sombre. He began to self-publish, then a smiling
Chris wanted to publish him. Lynda gave her sad but funny history of working in comics prior to working with Chris. Seth and others talked about one of the first major creators D&Q published, Julie Doucette and
her impact on comics, particularly women doing comics. The group also spoke about digital and print versions of books, limitations and how they can learn from them. Peter Birkemoe also spoke about Drawn and Quarterly.

The New Mainstream (1:03:44, 58.3mb)
Moderated by Chris Butcher, this panels line up was Ryan North, Karl Kerschl, Brenden Fletcher, Babs Tarr, Ray Fawkes, Cameron Stewart and Chip Zdarsky. The group spoke about the experience of going from indy
comics to "mainstream" comics, getting push back on their work while working on their books, universe continuity getting involved in their stories, the different audience and people not liking their work,
creating different costumes for the characters and the reactions they get from them, a characters long history and how they deal with it, keeping characters in their iconic state for long term readability
purposes, being Canadian (except Babs Tarr) and is there a reason they are now all doing mainstream comics, their goals for their books, the benefits of working with editors, writing single issues and writing
for a trade at the same time, stuff they want to sneak into the books and writing for a specific audience.

Spotlight: Gurihiru (1:03:38, 58.2mb)
Deb Aoki talks to the Japanese art team of Guihiru. They are Chifuyu Sasaki and Naoko Kawano and have been working on North American comics for a number of years now. Through their translator they talked about their work
on Avatar the Airbender, A Babies vs X Babies and how they and Scottie Young created the babies version of the characters. They also revealed which baby character they did not like drawing and why. They fondly reminisced
of their time on Thor and the Warriors Four. They revealed why they started working for North American publishers, their preference to work in colour, their work prior to North American publishers and the adjustments
they had to make. They revealed the had created a Star Wars Japanese - English dictionary, a picture book for an Australian publisher and mentioned their colouring of Raina Telegmeier's Smile. The conversation shifted to
their process from layout sketches to a finished page, working in pen and ink and in digital, how they collaborate when they work, how they schedule their way of working on a book and juggling multiple projects at once,
arguments they have and how they resolve them, why they decided to work under a single name and how they met. It was requested that no pictures be taken of them, as many Japanese creators like to keep their privacy. The
influences of US comics on Japan was brought up, with them mentioning Spawn, Neal Adams, Frank Frazatta were very popular in Japan. The audience asked if they were interested in writing, the number of female artists in
Japan and their reaction to the amount in North America.

What do Women Want? Writing Comics for a female audience (1:03:26, 58mb)
On this panel was Brenden Fletcher, Sam Maggs, Sydney Padua, Sandra Bell-Lundy, Svetlana Chmakova and the panel was moderated by Lianne Sentar. Topics discussed were pitching comics aimed at female readers and
the reaction they get from that, web comics and female readers, female fans and their feedback, why female lead books are seen as 'female' books but books with male leads are seen as 'universal', how writing for
a female audience affects their writing, books they recommend for female readers, what proportions they decide to use when designing and drawing the female figure and their favourite female characters.

Truth & Intimacy in Graphic Memoir (52:00, 47.6mb)
Moderated by Johanna Draper Carlson, panelists included Raina Telgemeier, Dustin Harbin, Etienne Davodeau and joining part way through was John Porcellino. The group started off describing their work, then they discussed
how true are their stories, what they include and exclude, how people who've been depicted in their books reacted, why they started doing graphic memoir, the most difficult part of doing the work, whether people respond
more to sad or happy stories and what other artists doing graphic memoir were they influenced by.

Drawn and Quarterly: Ask Me Anything (52:02, 47.6mb)
Chris Oliveros, Peggy Burns and Tom Devlin answers Heidi MacDonald's questions on a variety of topics including what role Chris now plays within the company now that he's stepping down, what Peggy and Tom will be doing
and what will happen to their old roles, why Chris started publishing comics, doing the D&Q anthology and what inspired it, former publisher Vortex and wooing Chester Brown away from them, Peggy's history of working at
DC and moving to D&Q, Tom history with his former Highwater Comics company and how he ended up working for D&Q, the company's surviving the 90s and their transition to publishing Graphic Novels & adapting to the book
market, their first big successful Graphic Novel, the amount of Good cartoonists and keeping up with them all, the title of Chris's new book and when it's coming out, how the group works when picking what they publish,
which new book they are all excited about, how long it took for D&Q to make money, the cost of living in Montreal, their future goals, Kim Thompsons death and how Chris wanted his company to outlive him not only to a 2nd
generation but to a 3rd as well.

The evening also saw long-time London Free Press editorial cartoonist Merle “Ting” Tingley inducted into the Canadian Cartoonist Hall of Fame, aka “Giants of the North”.
His award was accepted by his son Cameron Tingley

Making Money with Creator Owned Comics (50:41, 46.4mb)
This panel was Jason Brubaker talking about the various ways of making money with creator owned comics. Among the topics discussed are: Giving away your work, Kickstarter unexpected expenses and depression,
1,000 true fans, focus on building a career, having a day job, publishing in print and in digital, doing exclusives in various forms of publishing, conventions, the various ways
of making passive income, print on demand, licensing & merchadising, patreon, deviant art & tumbler vs your own website, monthly comics vs graphic novels, website ads & advertising, fanslaters translating
his work and international publishing deals.

The Ins and Outs of Self Publishing with Kickstarter (54:08, 49.5mb)
On the panel was Paul Roman Martinez, Daniel Davis, Travis Hanson and Craig Engler (Kickstarter employee and also successful Kickstarter). They spoke about the following topics: E-mailing Kickstarter and getting advice before
starting your campaign, creating an e-mail lists of fans, how much to ask for, what your biggest expenses are, how much to pad out your time and money requests due to unforeseen problems, how much are kickstarter and
credit card processing fee's, paying an artist, the design and layout of the Kickstarter page, putting images and videos on your page, getting background music for your video, when you should start your
campaign, for how long you campaigns should be and what to avoid, what awards to offer, the emotional rollercoaster that comes with a kickstarter campaign, social media advertising, the logistics of mailing out all the books and more.

How To Run a Comics Anthology and Not Screw It Up (52:33, 48.1mb)
Moderated by Kel McDonald, the panelists were Taneka Stotts, Sfe Monster and Spike Trotman. The group talked about how they got started doing anthologies, their successes, creating
the types of anthologies that people want to buy, various ways of paying contributors, doing a mix of inviting friends to submit work and open call submissions, how to prepare for when people don't submit
their work, rejecting submissions - including your friends and how some people handle that, the importance of a contract, exclusive and reprint rights for the stories, editing the work that was submitted were
among the topics covered.

World Building in Comics (51:00, 46.7mb)
Panelists were Evan Dahm, Carla Speed McNeil and Greg Rucka. The moderator was Professor Ben Saunders. The group talked about the advantages that the comics medium has over prose and film with world building
and they used a page of Carla's Finder to demonstrate this point. Rucka explained the difficulty of doing this in prose. Rucka also linked cosplay to people wanting to live in other worlds for a while. The
group talked a bit about the world building in the original Star Wars. They agreed that establishing a mood is important to world building. Rucka said as an author you can get lost in your word building
and you need to know when to stop building the world and move on with the story. Carla gave an example how in Finder a character ended up shaping the world in the series. They discussed other people reading
into the world they created and gave what their worlds say about their real world view. They also discussed very wordy fantasy prose novels and the group recommended books for people to read.

Being Non-Compliant (46:24, 42.4mb)
Moderator was Patrick Reed from ComicsAlliance. On the panel were Noelle Stevenson, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Erika Moen, Kate Leth
and eventually Spike Trotman. The group was asked what was Non Complaint and Kelly Sue gave a strong answer. Kate Leth talked about introducing queer characters to her all ages comic work, Erika Moen talked
about teaching and dropping it of her own accord and just focusing on adult comics, Spike talked about how artists can do adult and kids material at the same time - something those that do kids material are
afraid of doing. She said some artists do the adult material under a pseudonym so that it doesn't show up when a kid googles their name. The group spoke about diversity and men feeling threatened by it. They all
talked about a twitter asshole who sends them all rape threats, but Noelle had a funny story of messing with the guy. They say it's weird how guys will love superhero ideas espoused by Captain America, then
be mean towards women. They started talking about their heroes and the women going through gamergate hell are among them. Spike talked about how Dave Sim was her hero until issue 186 where she went into a
tailspin going from loving and hating him at the same time. They spoke about the criticism of how women's stories are all about feelings which lead into about men's work having feelings too, but somehow that
doesn't count. Spike talked about the success of her Smut Peddler anthology. The group also said what is uplifting to them. Note: There is swearing during this panel. I also spliced out my asking people
permission for recording during the introduction.

Strip Tease: Adult Comics and the Perverts who draw them (1:31:17, 83.5mb)
On the panel was Blue Delliquanti, Leia Weathington, Spike Trotman and the panel was moderated by Erika Moen. Spike started off telling a story about how a former co-worker of hers stole somebody's credit
card and used it to buy a bunch of stuff and they got arrested. The group introduced themselves and explained why they do porn. Blue talked about being Hetro on paper until she submitted a lesbian porn comic
for the Smut Peddler anthology. The group talked about their sex education, their parents reactions to sex and how it affected them. There was talk about how, in general, men write porn and how video porn
affected them. The group also discussion around Erotic Fan Fiction and how the pressure for Men to be "Men" is very limiting when it comes to exploring sexuality. They all revealed the
weirdest porn they've ever seen. People wanted to know what Erika does with her sex toys that she reviews. The group discussed tumbler as a good place to get realistic body types. The audience had asked
about long form Erotica stories and Spike revealed she is doing one and it's successful, she will be publishing more under the name Smut Peddler Presents. The group talked about accepting their own bodies.
This panel was able to on longer than normal as it was the last panel for that room that day. Note: This panel has swearing.

Comics in the Real World: The Non-Fiction Revolution (50:13, 45.9mb)
Meryl Jaffe moderated this panel with Otis Frampton, Mike Maihack, Royden Lepp, Eric Kallenborn, Nick Dragotta and Kazu Kibuishi. Meryl asked who was a big influence on them growing up and almost all of
them spoke about a teacher who gave them encouragement at an early age. The group talked about the growth of comics and combating skepticism about the medium. Eric talked about how he wished publishers
would put a "teachers edition" of some books that covered up nudity because he's certain they could sell hundreds of those books easily to the teacher market. He gave Blankets and The Sculptor (new Scott
McCloud book) as examples of books he and other teachers would love to teach from but because of the nudity, a teacher could lose their career if they used it. One thing comic creators wanted to
combat was that comics were only a gateway to reading prose. Comics is a different and valid form of literature all on it's own. The group talked about the many lessons that having kids made comics teaches
them. They spoke of how visual literacy is becoming more important skill for people to have. They talked about doing comics digitally vs print and also plugged what they have that either just came out or is
about to be released.

Celebrating Will Eisner's The Spirit at 75 (46:44, 42.7mb)
Professor Ben Saunders and panelists Kurt Busiek, Carla Speed McNeil & Tim Sale talked about the Spirit and Eisner's work while looking at slides. Among the things discussed were: How much work Eisner did
when running a studio as he had multiple artists involved, Eisner's designs on his splash pages, his stories and use of silent panels, the Spirit story 10 minutes, the Ebony character, they also said what
quality from Eisner they took away and apply to their own work.

Convention Horror Stories (46:14, 42.3mb)
This is an ECCC tradition of where Jim Zub and another guests tell convention stories, both good and bad about themselves and their fans. This year Katie Cook was on the panel. Jim started off with his story
of being weird around Neil Gaiman when he first met him and Katie spoke about a similar experience with Stan Sakai. They said even though they are pro's, they are still fans and their awkwardness around
some of them never goes away. Both of them talked about strange sketch requests that they either did or turned down, including from people at ECCC. They also both spoke about a good fan encounter. Then
ended the panel by saying they do love comic fans and that the bad ones are a tiny fraction of their fan encounters. Note: There is Swearing on this panel.

Harvey Kurtzman: The Man Who Created MAD (48:54, 44.7mb)
Author Bill Schelly and publisher Gary Groth go through some slides showing work throughout Kurtzman's career and talk about the various points of his career. Among these are:
His early work in comics, his work while in the Army, his Hey Look 1 pagers at Marvel Comics, his EC work, starting with his
horror and sci-fi work and then his Anti-War War Comics, MAD, the Mad paperbacks, the other MAD cartoonists and how Kurtzman knew them, Harvey as an
editor, the Superduper Man story that set the course for MAD that lasts until today, Alfred E. Newman, MAD becoming a magazine, Harvey's dislike of the comics
industry, why Harvey left MAD, his work for Trump, Humbug and Help! magazines, who some of the staff that worked there that went on to do great things (including Terry Gilliam
from Monty Python fame who wrote the introduction), the Goodman Beaver story, Little Annie Fannie and Harvey being the grandfather of underground comics and the numerous
people whom he influenced.

In Brief: Writing Short Comics (52:33, 48.1mb)
Moderated by Jody Houser, on the panel was Marta Tanrikulu, Amy Chu, James Tynion IV, and James Asmus. They all gave an
introduction to themselves and what they do. They talked about how they started doing comics and if short stories were their way into the comics industry.
Regarding doing short stories for the purpose of breaking in, it was recommended people write 10 of them and get somebody else to pick out
the best ones and ask an artist to draw them. They all agreed it was easier to write long form comics. With short stories you can focus on 1
element of writing like dialogue, pacing, etc.. they warn against trying to compress too much into a short story, something they
see people who finally get a crack at doing comics do. One advantage to a short story is it's easier to get an artist to squeeze it
into their schedule. The group talked about using short stories to branch into longer ones. They mentioned how writing a short
story can influence their choice on weather to pursue a large, creator owned story. They talked a lot about anthologies via
kickstarter and the opportunities there, as well as opportunities in regular publishing. They say using short stories is a good way
to develop your skills, particularly ones you are not naturally strong at. They said for artists, crisp clean storytelling is super important
and especially the ability to pack a lot of info into a panel, particularly with facial expressions and body language as it can save the writer
from having to explain things in dialogue. They talked about the differences of using licensed characters over original work.
How much direction they give an artist and how to find which anthologies are taking submissions.

Heartbreakers: Jamie McKelvie and Kieron Gillen (48:34, 44.4mb)
On the panel was Matt Wilson, Jamie McKelvie, Kieron Gillen and Andrew Wheeler was the moderator. Topics covered were:
How they met both online and in person, their early work both with each other and other creative partners, how Phonogram was
pitched to Image, their collaboration process, them continuing to work together after all this time, what they thought the
best and worst qualities about each other were, Jamie talked about how he designs characters, Kieren talked about how he
writes characters, making them suffer and what he's trying to say, Kieren also talked about Young Avengers and how he gets
mad at the suggestion he did it for the money, Jamie talked about fashion design and how he brings in the real world into
his work, Matt discussed the colouring and how they start with the cover and follow that into the interior of the book, they
then revealed when the new Phonogram comic is set and if they were to do more Young Avengers what would they do.

Science Fact in Comics (49:44, 45.5mb)
This panel consisted of Charles Soule, Patrick Meaney, Darick Robertson and moderator Matt Pizzolo. Each gave an introduction and then talked about the current trend of sci-fi stories when it comes to science fact.
Charles spoke about how he met a NASA Engineer who reached out to him and helped his Letter 44 book. Charles also told other NASA stories as he got access to their mission control and how they run projects. Darick talked
about future technology and how it's amazing the level of technology that we have today. They talked about take downs by actual scientists like Neal Degrassi Tyson vs Gravity. Interstellar was a topic as well as how
far they go towards telling science fact vs telling a story. They discussed how much science research reading they do. Another topic was how their science fiction becomes science fact, with Darick giving Spider's
glasses as an example towards google glasses. There was questions on if the science research comes before, during or after they do their world building. The group talked about the Mars Mission and traveling to Mars. They
talked about how some science fiction ideas they have thaat sound cool, but in real world would be very bad. They gave their favourite sci-fi authors, talked about climate change and about getting 2nd or 3rd level science in
their books correct. Darick and Charles talked about the science behind Wolverines bones and healing factor.

Image Comics: Something for Everyone (49:29, 45.3mb)
This was a large panel with Jay Faerber, Jeff Lemire, Ivan Brandon, Kelly Sue DeConnick, Megan Levens, Landry Walker, Kurt Busiek, Joe Keating. The panel was moderated by David Brothers. This panel was mainly Q&A with the
audience. Among the topics discussed are: Executing their ideas, the lack of editing at Image and the pitching processes, the level of control creators have - right down to the paper stock, how they stay on schedule between
work for hire and creator owned work, conflicts with work for hire in terms of editoral direction, if they self sensor and where they get their ideas from, how much detail the writer gives their artist, if they write for the
audience or not, would they turn over their creator owned work to other creators to continue with, how they avoid or use stereotypes within their work.

By Design: Fantagraphic Books (50:07, 45.8mb)
On the panel was Gary Groth, Keeli McCarthy and Jacob Covey. Gary went through some slides showing his early graphic design sense, from his earliest fanzines to books he published. He said their book designe improved in the
late 80s when he hired a designer for them. Jacob felt Fantagraphic book design took a real leap of improvement when Seth designed the Peanuts books and they also showed how influential it was by showing other books that
used extemely similar designs. Jacob and Keeli talked about the freedom they have to come up with designs and working with creators, whom are often artists and may have their own illustration based design ideas. They talked
about some of their recent books that the two designers worked on, including the Gahan Wilson 50 years of Playboy cartoons book, The Popeye book, Love and Rockets, Angry Youth Comics, Milton Caniff biography. They also talked
about the difficulty of book design with the Harvey Kurtzman biography, in terms of using the MAD logo to sell the book, the size of MAD vs Harvey's name, getting approval from MAD lawyers. They also talked a bit about market
consideration on the design, mentioning they have to put the barcode on the cover somewhere.

Cecil Castellucci Panel (45:37, 41.7mb)
Cecil introduced her self and her books, giving each a brief summary. She also talked about her work in other media, particularly a comic book opera. Tin Star was her latest book and she revealed how the
book was inspired by the movie Casablanca and also how her picture book Odd Duck came about. Cecil spoke of her upbringing and who were major influences on her road to being an artist. She gave some stories
of her youth and previous experience doing ballet dancing, indy rock band and working for a punk rock record company. She discussed how she writes Novels and open and closed way of writing comic strips and
gave examples of each. Cecil also announced that she will be writing an upcoming Star Wars novel and answered questions from the audience.

Scott Chantler Panel (1:00:29, 55.3mb)
Scott gave a presentation, mainly about his book Two Generals. The book is about his grandfather and his friend who served in WWII. While Scott talked there were pictures on the screen. He showed the
back of a photograph of his grandfather and his friend, where they described themselves as 2 Generals (jokingly) which is where he got the name of the book. He said that his grandfathers division was to use
bicycles to go into little downs and secure them, but the roads were so full of glass and other debris that they never used them. Scott spoke of other people who had information that really helped him tell
this story, from friends of his grandfather to relatives to people who were close to his grandfather. Scott also talked a lot about writing non fiction, from how much time he spent on research, to eventually
having too much information and the method he used to decide what to use to create his book. Other topics covered was the 9 panel grid he chose, the colours of the book, people getting in touch with him
after the book was published, and his 3 Thieves series and where he's at with those books.

Graphic Novel Programming At Your Library (47:43, 43.6mb)
On the panel was creator Greg Evans, retailer Joe Field and Librarian Hillary W. Chang. Hillary had organized a Hawaii tour for Greg Evans around a number of Libraries. She talked about reaching out to creators to get them to do visits. Greg talked about how much lead time is required for creators and the difficulties of agreeing to a visit either too far out or too soon. Joe talked about the amount of time needed to successfully plan the event and needing at least 2-3 months of lead time. Joe also gave a origin of FCBD and how he and other libraries use it to do events. Hillary explained why Librarians should get involved and the best way to do it. Evans gave the differences between doing an event at a Library vs a book store. Hillary told a humorous story about internal difficulties in planning the event, but said the visit is well worth any problems that can come up. A lot of Librarians were in the audience and asked questions about their situation and doing programming. I came in a few minutes late to this panel.

Spotlight On Bill Finger: The co-creator of Batman (47:10, 43.1mb)
The panel was moderated by Dr. Travis Langley and on it was Benjamin and Athena Finger, Lee Meriwether, Michael Uslan, Marc Tyler Nobleman, Mark Evanier, Jens Robinson and Tom Andrae. Part way through the
panel Writer/Editor Denny O'Neil came up on stage and talked about his meeting and spending an evening with Bill Finger. They showed a video montage of some of the things Bill co-created, from Batman
characters, Wildcat and the original Green Lantern. Part way through the panel a Neal Adams video was played where he talked about the importance of Bill Finger. Michael Uslan talked about meeting Bill
twice as a kid and taking Athena and Jerry Robinson to the Dark Knight movie premiere and introduced them to the director and actors who played the major characters. Tom said when he co-wrote the Batman
and Me book with Bob Kane he tried getting as much about Bill Finger in there as he could. He also revealed that Orson Wells was a fan of Batman comics and used a bit of a Batman story Bill wrote for a
movie. Athena said she was in hiding and how people didn't believe her when she spoke about her grandfather being the co-creator of Batman. She thanked Marc for finding her and slowly bringing her out. Benjamin also said the same thing, kids didn't believe him until Marc's book was in his school and he could show it to them. Lee Meriwether talked about meeting Batman fans and what makes them different. She was also really happy to be a part of the "Batman family." Jens Robinson discussed his father Jerry Robinson and his role in working on Batman. Mark Evanier gave the origin on the Bill Finger award, Jerry Robinson's role and his own experience of meeting Bill Finger.

Spotlight on Colleen Coover and Paul Tobin (49:47, 45.5mb)
The two talked about their body of work with the covers on a screen. They started off with The Fringe and went through Small Favors, Banana Sunday, Marvel Adventures, X-Men First Class, Gingerbread Girl, Prepare to Die, Bandette, Colder, Batman 66, Adventure Time: The flip side mini-series, The Witcher and then announced books that were upcoming from them. This included Angry Birds, I was the Cat, an Aliens, Prometheus and Predator book that ties all 3 worlds together, Colder The Bad Seed, a new print collection of Bandette that reprints issues 6 to 9 and a new 5 book deal Paul sold to Bloomsbury for a middle age book series. Along the way the two of them talked about things in particular to a title or just in general. Both of them worked in comic shops and for a while Paul worked at Powell's bookstore, which had a perk of being able to borrow books for a long time or buy them at an employee discount. Paul discussed making Marvel Adventures an all ages book, meaning adults can enjoy it too, he didn't like that often All Ages is thought of as kids only comics. Paul said he liked writing stories from a variety of genres to keep him fresh as it helps him to be a better all-around writer than just sticking to one genre would. In particular he liked doing stories other than event type comics, taking something small and making it an event for that particular character. He laughed about once turning in an issue of Marvel Adventures that had an 18 page fight scene in response to an editor who was always asking for more action, only the have the editor still ask for more action. Both Colleen and Paul chatted about Bandette, the online comic from Monkey Brain and how they liked the freedom of being able to tell the story without a publisher mandated page count, if the story required less or more pages, they can do it. Paul has been doing a bunch of video game related comics, which he said was messing with his video game downtime as he sometimes can't take his mind off comics while playing them now. Colleen said she wanted her characters to have fun in her stories. The Aliens/Prometheus/Predator book all has writers living in Portland, which is says is great for getting together and hashing out stuff between them.

Jules Feiffer Goes Noir (54:17, 49.7mb)
Panel was with Mark Evanier, Paul Levitz and William Menaker, from Liveright, a subdivision of WW Norton. Jules Fifer was supposed to be at San Diego but had to decline due to recent health issues. Paul discussed doing an interview with Jules for his upcoming book about Will Eisner. Jules revealed he was working on a new book called Kill My Mother and it's a noir book, something he held off doing for a very long time because he felt his noir storytelling was not as good as Will Eisners. Jules now felt confident enough to give it a try. They had a couple of Kill My Mother books there and passed them around the audience. Mark and Paul talked about the importance of Jules the Great Comic Book Heroes book. They said he had brought a lot of respectability to comics because Jules was incredibly respected for his comics and other award winning written works. So if Jules said these Golden Age comic artists were good, then people who had dismissed them began re-examining them with a different perspective. Part of the book was printed in Playboy and this lead to Bill Everett getting work in comics again as he was called a genius in that excerpt. Mark said the book was like the opposite of Seduction of the Innocent. Paul mentioned that Jules grew up in the same neighbourhoods with the same income and education level as most comic artists of the golden age but managed to bring himself up to much higher heights in terms of diversity and respectability, but Jules always owned up and never shied away about his past in working in the comic book industry. William also talked about Jules and how WW Norton wanted to publish anything Jules would create. The group talked about how Jules was doing new and experimental work, which at his age (83) was very surprising. Mark talked about seeing a play that had dancers holding the pose of a Jules dancing drawing, while people in street clothes came in and read dialogue from his comics. It was a very entertaining play to watch both those things and he's surprised it's still not in production somewhere because it's a very cheap play to put on. They took Q&A from the audience and revealed which Golden Age artists influenced Jules.

Teaching Content Through Comics: Math, Science and History (54:37, 50.0mb)
On the panel was Jason Batterson, Tracy Edmunds, Geoffrey Golden, Josh Elder, Nick Dragotta and Jonathan Hennessey. This panel started a few minutes early. Jason talked about his math book taught in comic book form where the characters are monsters and how girls have been "caught" secretly reading it on the playground. Geoffery Golden discussed his book Probamon, a pokemon parody that shows kids how to solve math/logic problems. It's very much inspired by Square 1 and Sesame Street. Nick Dragotta does Howtoons, a science comic about building things out of local household items. It encourages kids to learn by playing, following the instructions of the book. He mentioned he has 1 page showing kids how to use a hacksaw and as a result some Libraries put the book into the adult section. He disagrees with this as he thinks kids need to learn how to use tools in order to get into the nitty gritty of building things. He has a 2nd book coming out. Fred Van Lente announced his new books, Action Presidents (US). It is a follow up to his Action Philosophers series. Jonathan Hennessey showed his The Comic Book History of Beer and said it's his goal to bring ideas that have been floating around in academia out into a more mainstream audience via the graphic novel format. In particular this looks at the theory that early humans learned to do agriculture in order to create beer and not to feed themselves. At the end Josh Elder plugged his Mail Order Ninja book.

Manga: Lost in Translation (49:20, 45.1mb)
The moderator was Jonathan Tarbox, on the panel was Ed Chavez, Lillian Diaz-Przybyl, Nathan Collins and Stephan Paul. Lillian talked about trying to find the origin on Glomp and things it could be a Matt Thorn created sound effect. They took questions and said that sound effects are a difficult thing to translate from Japan. They have 2 different types of sound effects and some of them make noise for things that don't make noise, like the reaching of a hand. They also said Japanese puns are also very difficult and have to come up with a US equivalent that gets the spirit of the joke across. The group discussed problems generated for them by bad scalations causing fans to get mad at them for "getting it wrong" when they have a better knowledge of the Japanese language than the scanlators. They also revealed sometimes their "wrong" translations are due to Japanese editors who can't read English (and likely got an intern who barely understands English to translate for them) demand changes to something incorrect because they feel they need to change something to justify their job. Most of them talked about doing translation on a freelance basis, which many of the panelists were. Editors on the panels said it's in their interest to have a number translators working for them part time. They fear if they rely on a few key people and one gets sick it can make the books late. They also said using the same translators creates a sameness across the line in terms of the voice of the comics. The more translators working reduce that. The group didn't like editors that paid extremely low rates or in 1 case nothing at all as they asked scanalators to do the work for free. They gave $10 a page as being a very, very good rate for a translator. They also said the negotiating part for a page rate is difficult, too high you don't get the work, too low and you have a difficult time getting better rates down the road. They also talked about translator should technically be invisible so that it's a seamless reading experience but they'd like to get credit, copyright and royalties for their work. The group also discussed using Japanese terms vs American ones and said sometimes you should keep things more on the Japanese side like when it's a historical story.

Will Eisner Teacher And Mentor (47:41, 43.6mb)
On the panel was moderator Paul Levitz, Joe Quesada, Batton Lash, Drew Friedman, and Mike Carlin. The panel was about Esiner's time teaching at the New York School of Visual Arts. Batton talked about how he and a friend talked the principal into starting a comic book art course. The principal said if 30 students signed up they would do it. He asked what teachers they would like and as a perfect wish list they suggested Will Esiner and Harvey Kurtzman. They were flabbergasted when they both agreed to become teachers. Paul asked who would be a good teacher today and Mike Carlin suggested panellist Joe Quesada (who said he couldn't due to professional time constraints). Drew said when he was there, only a few students in the class know the importance of the teachers they had. Quesada talked about while he was there he had a 2 hour conversations with Eisner and how much he learned from him. He also talked about prior going to the school he was trying to draw like Mike Mignola and when he met him, Mike knew who he was, told him he was aping him wrong and spent 5 hours helping him out, which was huge for him. They discussed Gallery Magazine, which was a magazine Will put out with the students work. Drew was the editor of it for 1 year. Will was big on not just how to draw, but also how to manage yourself in the business end of being an artist. He was big on the artist being in charge of their own work. At one point Will would bring in other artists to teach a class like Neal Adams. Will very strongly insisted that comics would not die, despite the naysayers. He promoted the medium and believed it would always survive. Quesada said while the business goes up and down, if the business survived Wertham and the Senate Hearings then comics aren't going away. Drew said his father worked for Magazine Management Inc (the owner of Marvel comics - that published magazines). He said got Marvel comics from him back in the early 60s. Mike Carlin said he learned about storytelling from Eisner. Paul said Will knew that everything on the comic page was there for a reason and he would big and finding and explaining that reason. The group talked about Eisner's Sequential Art books and other good books out there now. They also discussed comics now being done digitally and how they think he would react to that. The group revealed how both Eisner and Kurtzman would pay students for jokes for their books.

CBLDF: Graphic Novels and their Turbulent Past: Now Classroom Tools of Tolerance (54:32, 49.9mb)
On the panel was Charles Brownstein, Meryl Jaffe, Royden Lepp, Betsy Gomez, JenniferL. Holm, Matt Holm and Matt Phelam. They first talked briefly about Wertham and Seduction of the Innocent. Matt Phelan talked about publishers originally not wanting his GN because GNs "weren't for kids" until Schoolastic published Bone. Royden Lepp discussed pulling back on what he shows in terms of violence in his work. The group also discussed drugs and violence, diversity, how to depict violence, giving kids a book to doodle in as an alternative to causing problems in class, but also how to create a safe space as kids do get into trouble for drawing violent imagery, how that a drawing can be a better way to learn something. They also recommended books to a new librarian who sought advice on what to rack for her graphic novel selection.

CBLDF: Dr. Wertham's War on Comics (50:59, 46.6mb)
Charles Brownstein did an introduction for Carol Tilley. Carol started by reading a great letter sent to by a young woman in response to the Readers Digest except of Seduction of the Innocent. Carol gave some comic industry marketplace info, particularly in comparison to traditional children's books. She also gave stats on how popular comics were with the general audience. She talked about the ACMP and the in house advisory committees, particularly Dr. Laura Bender and Josette Frank. She revealed that a group Bender & Franks were involved in gave a bad review to a particular authors children's book, who then introduced Senator Kefauver and Wertham and convinced Kefauver to look into comic books. Carol talked about comic pro's that talked with Wertham and some that agreed with him. She went over briefly of the hearings and the CCMA. Carol then gave several examples of Wertham distorting and falsifying evidence in order to make the case against comic books.

Comics Arts Conference Session #8: Who Created Batman? (51:10, 46.8mb)
Kathleen McClancy gave a brief introduction and the panel was moderated by Dr. Travis Langley. On the panel was Nicky Wheeler-Nicholson, Marc Tyler Nobleman, Tom Andre, Arlen Schumer, Jens Robinson, Athena Finger, Denny O'Neil and Brad Ricca. The panel started with a video of Kane giving a version of story of where he created Batman and Robin. Afterwards Marc Tyler Nobelman talked about the many parts of the Batman mythos that Finger was responsible for. There was some information about Bill and his family given. They also talked about the inspirations of Batman and in particular the large amount of crime that was going on in New York at the time. They also discussed the Joker and Robin's creation.

Spotlight on Don Rosa (57:34, 52.7mb)
This was moderated by Gary Groth. Don talked about his father owning a construction company and his sister`s comic collection which he inherited when she moved out of the house. He said the first cheque he ever wrote was to Gary Groth for his Fantastic fanzine. He spoke about his love of the Dell and Archie comics (and dislike of Harvey comics) and movies. He said he got much of his storytelling from movie directors and he was making paper movies. He revealed that Will Elder, Mort Wiesinger superman stories and Robert Crumb were among his artist influences. He said he went to college to be a civil engineer and while he was there he did a strip in his college newspaper. They wanted him to be political, but at that time he wasn't very political at all, so he ended up doing Carl Barks like stories. His other influences were Hal Foster and Walt Kelly. He said he once did an underground Uncle Scrooge story. He said he has a massive comic collection. He did go into the family business but didn't find it very rewarding. He got into drawing duck stories when he came across Gladstone publishing them and told them he had to be the one to do new duck stories and they agreed to let him do one. He quit Gladstone and comics when Disney demanded all his original art. He wasn't getting paid much to do the stories so he was counting on the sale of the art pages to keep him afloat. Don ended up quitting comics for a year but wound up working on Tail Spin cartoon, writing a couple of episodes. He then discovered Disney books was being published in Europe and were super popular there so he sent them a telegram about doing some work for them. After a couple of funny phone calls he got the job. He thinks people were hungry for new good duck stories, which he provided. He talked about how popular the ducks are over in Europe. He said after WWII the European economy was devastated and comics were a cheap mass market entertainment to that people could afford and enjoy. He talked about his meeting Carl Barks once. He said he doesn't have a website, said there are some good fan ones that is even better than what he could come up with. He said how he's not a fan of Disney because they bully small companies. His favourite stories involve glittering gold. He likes to have complete control of his work, which is why he didn't stay very long in animation. He revealed he puts the work DUCK in every story and why he draws black noses on everybody. He also talked about liking always being compared to Carl Barks.

30 Years of Usagi Yojimbo! (40:16, 36.8mb)
Stan Sakai talks about why he chose a Rabbit for Usagi Yojimbo, his hatred of drawing horses (which is why Usagi is always walking everywhere), he also goes into how he chooses animals for his characters. There is an update on Sharon, Stan's wife who is dealing with a brain tumour at this time and the Sakai Project, a book featuring drawings of Usagi Yojimbo by many of the top artists in the industry that will go towards Sharon's care. Diana had asked for some questions via facebook prior to the panel and asked some of them at the panel. They also talked about Stan's other work, including his Usagi Yojimbo: Senso, which puts Usagi 20 years in the future.

The Best and Worst Manga of 2014 (45:48, 41.9mb)
Moderated by Deb Aoki (MangaComicsManga.com),
on the panel was Brigid Alverson (Mangablog.MangaBookshelf.com),
David Brothers (4thletter.net),
and Christopher Butcher (UdonEntertainment.com).
The group goes through their picks on the best manga of the year by various age categories, the worst manga for any age, the under rated but great manga, most anticipated new manga, most wanted manga
and favourite digital only manga. Each person has a minute to talk about their picks with Deb using a dinger to let them know their time is up and to finish. There was a draw at the end for some Manga that
Chris bought that I've edited out.

Spotlight: Chuck Dixon (52:41, 48.2mb)
Chuck Dixon did a brief introduction to himself and his work and opened it up to Q&A. Recently Chuck Dixon talked about how Marvel and DC editors have blacklisted him because he is a conservative and appeared on Fox News. He started off talking about how he's always been conservative and was able to professionally work with Denny O'Neil and Cat Yronwode, both editors are known for being very far left in their political views. Chuck says he writes escapist entertainment and keeps his personal views out of his writing and can write either left or right wing views if required. He was questioned by audience members regarding other well-known conservatives who still get work by Marvel and DC, he gave examples on how certain conservative creators were denied work and believes that some issues editors don't mind you being conservative on, but if you touch the third rail, like he did, you are blacklisted. He said there were a lot of conservative creators who have e-mailed him in support of his views but were afraid of coming out about their politics in fear of it costing them work. Chuck also answered questions about books and characters he worked on or created. He said he loved working on the Punisher and Batman, he gave an origin of the Birds of Prey book and the Batman villain Bane. He also talked about Nightwing, revealed details about Azrael and how his story was cut short by 6 months. Chuck revealed his love of the 1966 Batman TV show and how he would sneak small references in Batman to tease his editor Denny O'Neil who hated it, also that he loved the 90s animated series. He gave his opinion of DC's new 52. He said he loved doing the Batman/Punisher crossover and told us who would win in a fight. He also revealed he was on tap to write the Expendables 2 movie but walked away when they offered him comic book rates instead of movie rates. He talked about meeting and recommending Dan Slott to editors for writing jobs and he also gave a run down on his work, both in comics and in prose he is doing now.

Spotlight on Michelle Nolan (46:57, 42.9mb)
On the panel was Michelle Nolan, long time comic dealer Bud Plant and moderator Maggie Thompson. Maggie had asked Michelle 5 ways comics have changed over the years. Bud talked about Michelle's evolution from fan that used to buy books off him to professional. Michelle discussed her writing about comics and felt that teen humour and Archie comics in particular don't get enough historical focus. Bud and Michelle talked about their fanzine and also starting what they felt was the first free standing comic book store along with 4 other partners. They revealed they only old sold back issues because nobody would sell them new comics. They discussed Phil Suiling, inventor of the Direct Market and how Bud was the west coast distributor for his books. Regarding Phil, they talked about his comic conventions and Michelle revealed she bought a car just for the purpose of driving to the convention and using it to buy and take back a large collection of comics they bought. Michelle told what it was like for her growing up buying old comics and how she found and got them. She held up a Patsy Walker comic she just bought and talked about what was in that she liked. She said she had 37,000 comics and still wants 10,000 more. She very much enjoyed writing columns for Comic Book Marketplace and Comics Buyers Guide and said she was very resistant to e-mail to first but eventually had to join the internet.

Spotlight on Brian Haberlin (51:06, 46.7mb)
Brian went through his history in comics, his working for Marvel, Top Cow, co-creating several characters including Witchblade, doing digital colouring, having his own studio, getting into publishing and movie deals and the lesson he learned from it, then working for Todd McFarlane as EIC of his comics, he said he started publishing the TPD collections of the Spawn books when he was there. He also revealed how Todd ended up hiring him to draw Spawn for a while. Brian then left, starting his own studio again. Brian revealed how he had a movie deal with Sony, but then Columbine happened and felt his movie was too violent. So they then started to repurposes it as a children's cartoon, which didn't make a whole lot of sense to him. He promoted his new book called Anomaly, which is interactive with mobile phones and tablets. He showed how if you have one with the camera on aimed at the book animated characters come out that you can see on your mobile device. The characters will also interact if you do things like poke at them too much. He used this same technology on post cards that he put out to promote the book. He also has built into the book a game you can play via the mobile device and said he's done 3 updates to add new stuff for the mobile application. He also showed his 3D printed models. There was a draw at the end of the panel which I removed from the audio.

Fan vs Pro Comic Trivia Match (49:32, 45.3mb)
On the Pro side was Len Wein, Anthony Tollin and eventually Michael Davis. Filling in for Michael for a bit was Derek McCaw, who upon Michael showing up joined his usual fan team of David Oakes and Peter Svensson. Tom Galloway was the moderator this year. The topic of this year's match was characters celebrating their 75th, 50th and 40th year anniversary. Len Wein who is known for not being able to answer questions regarding the books he's written got a standing ovation for answering his 2nd ever. Michael Davis made a lot of black related jokes, one of which was accepted as an answer to a question to great humour. Among the characters that have questions about them were Batman, Hawk and Dove, Metamorpho, Avengers and JSA.

Note: Friday May 9th was Librarian & Educator day. For the general public TCAF was May 10-11th.

The Brinkley Girls, WWI and American Patriotism in Women's Comics: A talk by Trina Robbins. (38:58, 35.6mb)
The Introduction is by Dr. Barbara Postema. Trina talked about Nell Brinkley with a big touch screen TV (which she liked). She also talked about Nell's work, what it was saying, ran through some highlights
of some stories she told with her art and talked about her politics and humour, among other aspects. Trina then answered a variety of question about Nell, rediscovering her, why traditional comics history
don't touch on female cartoonists and Nell's original art.

Great Creator Visits! (50:05, 45.8mb)
Moderated by Scott Robins, this panel featured Lynn Johnston and Raina Telgemeier talking about their visits to schools and libraries. Lynn opened up about not liking to do schools where the kids are
forced to be there. She said they can be disruptive, a lot like she was at that age. She prefers events where those in attendance want to be there. Raina talked about having to deal with rowdy kids.
Lynn said she doesn't like overly long introductions because they drain the energy of the room. They gave a list of don't for events and among them were staff not aware of the event, no
advertising, not being able to sell their books after the show, no bathroom or coffee breaks between events and friends of the organizer wanting to dominate your time after the show. They also talked about
good creator visits they did. Both of them spoke about the struggle to make deadlines while doing visits, the age level they prefer talking to, doing visits on Skype and interviews via twitter. The
audience asked questions about their gay characters and what response they got from them. Lynn also talked about her decision to age the characters as the strip went on and how that affected merchandising.
Lynn said she really liked Rania's book Smile and gave Rania a big public stamp of approval for her work as a cartoonist.

Collection Maintenance. (1:05:38, 60.1mb)
On the panel was Robin Brenner, Scott Robins and Max Dionisio. It was moderated by Lindsay Gibb. They started by talking about their libraries, what they carry and what moves really well. Each
gave which websites they follow for keeping up with comic news. The method in which they house their collection was discussed. They spoke about how they handle Manga and buying series (full series or the
first few volumes). They talked about weeding out books that just don't circulate, something they all have to do. They discussed how to avoid pigeon holding their Libraries collection. Max talked about his
unique situation in an all-boys school in handling GLBT books. He finds them scattered around the library all the time so he knows they are being read, but they don't get taken out because kids are afraid of
outing themselves or just getting teased/bullied when others see their name on the Library card. They also discussed how digital access to comics has affected their circulation.

Comics and Undergrads. (53:33, 49mb)
Moderated by Lindsay Gibb, the panellists where Marta Chudolinska, Dr. Dale Jacobs and Dr. Barbara Postema. They started off talking about how they got involved in comics and how it relates to their current
academic work. They discussed what they like about comics, specific books they use in their teachings, how wordless comics are good for education, assignments they use comics to teach, how much they use
their library for their lessons, if they got any pushback to their work and how some of the theory between comics and picture books have a lot of overlap. Barbara mentioned that sometimes wordless comics get
called picture books. Marta talked about how the Library she works for tries to provide access to things that is out of reach for many people due to cost or scarcity, like artists editions books and comics
criticism.

2014 Book Talk: Kids. (34:36, 31.6mb)
Andrew Woodrow-Butcher spoke about some upcoming kids books that would be good for libraries. Among the books he mentioned were the new Amulet Vol 6, Cleopatra in Space, Salem Hyde, Star Wars Jedi Academy,
the Hilda series, Zita the Spacegirl, Jellaby (now back in print), A Cat Named Tim, Cat Dad King of the Goblins, new Amelia Rules books, The Dumbest Idea Ever, a new Battling Boy book, Anna and Froga,
Courtney Crumrin Vol 5, a new Lego book, A Regular Show book, a bigger, full colour reprinting of Dragon Ball Z, the Marvel Digests, itty bitty Hellboy and Aw Yeah Comics, Samurai Jack, Power Lunch, the
Sonic the Hedgehog and Megaman crossover book, Mermin, Dinosaurs, The Kings Dragon, Hidden, Gajin, Maddy Kettle, new Adventure Time books and WWE collections of their comics. Within the panel was Kazu
Kibuishi talking about Amulet and it's evolution. Kazu also revealed his serious health problems prior to doing the book where he got so sick he went into a coma. John Martz talked about a Cat Named Tim and
Jim Zub talked about Samurai Jack going from a mini-series to ongoing.
Note: I cut out about 4 minutes from the audio where they do a door prize giveaway.

In Conversation: Kate Beaton and Lynn Johnston. (1:11:11, 65.1mb)
This was moderated by Raina Telgemeier. Chris Butcher started the evening off with small talk about TCAF and how they try to be inclusive of all genders and show a diversity of people from different
backgrounds. He mentioned this year they are getting international press coverage and have artists from 20 different countries this year, which he's really happy about. He made a sly Rob Ford joke about
being sorry he named it the Toronto Comics Art Festival. Chris also thanked their sponsors of the show as well. Rania asked a variety of questions and they started with how the two of them got started in
comics. Lynn talked about her and Jim Davis (of Garfield fame) starting out at the same time. Throughout the show she talked about her previous jobs working in animation and a medical artist. Kate talked
about starting her web comic at a fortunate time when there was a lot less competition for people's attention on the internet. The two talked about their role models and particularly female role models.
Kate said Lynn was one for her. Raina mentioned that Lynn was the first female and Canadian winner of the Reuben Award and asked her what that was like. Lynn said it was very stressful because at the time
some people wanted Jim Davis to win (and some didn't) and she felt she was too young and hadn't really done anything yet to deserve the award at the time. In particular she mentioned a lot of MAD artists
(like Mort Drucker) who hadn't won the award yet and should have gotten it before her. She also told a funny story about how she handled other cartoonists when she was president of the Cartoonists Society.
The two talked about criticism from men. Family was a topic with how far you go, if they regret putting something out there and if they felt later that they overshared information. They talked about how fans
shared personal stories with them. This lead into Lynn talking about the outing of a gay character in For Better Or For Worse and the reaction she got from readers and newspapers. She thinks it was the best
story she did and the one she's the most proud of. They talked about their efforts to help out young artists. Lynn mentioned how when she has something personally bad happen to her she's thinks it will be
turned into a great story. Rania asked if they still love comics as much now as they did when starting out. Kate said she still does. Lynn talked about how her father loved the comics and comedy in general
and would read comics to her, point out the details in them, and would run films back and forth to show how it was all choreographed. Lynn also revealed she loves comedians and wanted to be one. Rania asked
what keeps them coming back to the drawing board. She also asked each of them what she is doing now. They also took some questions from the audience. Lynn said she really enjoyed working on the animated
For Better Or For Worse cartoon, said it was great working with all those people doing different things (music, artists, sound effects, etc..). She also revealed from working on the cartoon she drew her
strip with more detail as the animators needed detailed everything about her strip in order to make the cartoon. Kate talked about her growing up in small town and being like the only artist there.

Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips Spotlight. (55:48, 51mb)
Heidi MacDonald moderated this panel. They started off with how the two ended up working together and in particular how Sleeper came about. Ed was very outspoken during the panel, saying he wished he had retained ownership of it. Sean talked about his art and where digital is used to create it. The two spoke about their process of working together today. They revealed they hadn't seen each other in person in 5 years, but e-mailed each other daily. Ed said that he signed on to work with Marvel to publish through their Icon imprint. He also said the imprint was started for Bendis but they brought on David Mack's book so it didn't appear that way. He revealed that he got just got the rights back to Criminal a week ago and will be moving the series over to Image. He said that Icon was a imprint that was used as a favour to people who did their superhero books and didn't want his career to be at the mercy of favours from other people. He also revealed that Dan Buckley had to justify Icon to the shareholders as Marvel doesn't make much money from it. Ed said for a while he was paying creators out of pocket for a while on Criminal. Regarding his writing, Ed likes adding subtext in his stories so people get a lot out of it and it's not a quick read. He wants people to get something new out of the story when it gets re-read. Ed expressed appreciation for something Sean does that he sees no other penciler do is actually write in where the lettering would go to ensure that there is room there for the word balloon. So many other artists don't do that, which leaves not enough room for the dialogue and that leads to production issues. They also went over how Sean doesn't do splash pages very often. Ed brought up the "Archie" story within Criminal and what he was reacting too when he wrote it. He revealed he's been talking to Joe Hill about horror and wants to delve into that. Ed discussed the reason he does crime stories because when he was on the wrong side of the law in his youth, involved in shoplifting, doing and selling drugs to
other kids in his school and he likes the stories about the desperation of committing a crime and the twisted version of the American Dream. Ed revealed there is a new book coming about the 1940s+ Hollywood
with blacklists, the studio system and other issues. He said he had family that was working in Hollywood at the time and he wants to incorporate that information into the book.

Michael DeForge and Friends. (55:15, 50.5mb)
On the panel were Jillian Tamaki, Annie Koyama, Patrick Kyle, Michael DeForge and Ryan Sands. The creators (everybody but Annie) are involved in Youth
in Decline. They revealed there is a Lose collection coming about that collects issues #2 to #5. Michael said #1 does not fit in with the rest of the stories so he's not putting it into this
book. The group talked about how and what they choose to put online vs. what's for print. They talked about collaborating with others and how they handle differences of opinion. Doing anthologies and their
growing popularity, Jillian also asked questions to Michael and kind of co-moderated the panel. Annie revealed she has seen creators online that she was interested in publishing, but there was no contact info
for the creator so she moved on. Michael was credited as being a good writer by Jillian and wondered if the change in his drawing style has affected how he writes stories. They talked about a new book that
is coming out, took questions from the audience, and talked quite a bit about the need for validation among their peers. They also talked about needing a trusted another set of eyes to look at their work and
give feedback prior to publication.

Trina Robbins Spotlight. (57:44, 52.8mb)
During this panel Trina went though some parts of Pretty in Ink, her final book about female comic artists. She went through some of the earliest comic artists, starting with the first comic strip drawn by a
female and ending with the Women Comix anthology and a photo of the 40th reunion of the Women Comix anthology. After that Johanna Draper Carlson interviewed her about why she did the new book. She had
revealed she was very unhappy with her last book due to all the typos. She was really unhappy with her editor on that book and was not shy in saying so. Gary Groth of Fantagraphics asked her to do
this book and she had a lot of new information and wanted to correct some bad information in her previous books. She said Gary worked with her to make sure there wasn't a single typo in this book. The
audience also asked questions and she revealed that she would love to write Wonder Woman but DC would never hire her. She also felt that DC/Marvel female editors did not support female creators, but would
say they did in order to sell that there was no sexism in comics - in order to keep their jobs.

History/Nonfiction Comics. (58:33, 53.6mb)
This panel was moderated by Brigid Alverson. On the panel was Nick Bertozzi, Nick Abadzis, Diana Tamblyn, Nate Powell, Meags Fitzgerald and Tyrell Cannon. The group talked about why they choose to do
Nonfiction works, how doing it helps them as creators, how they deal with the facts getting in the way of telling a good story, the visual research and how important it is, if the subject is still alive and
do they reach out to them, if they worry about their audience reaction to the book, how they deal with direct quotes when it doesn't work with the script.

Ed Brubaker: Writing Comics Noir. (55:22, 50.6mb)
Andrew Murray and Adam Hines from Guys with Pencils podcast moderated the panel. Ed talked about how he got involved with Noir as a child. He also talked
about his past, saying one story from Lowlife was actually autobiography. He revealed that his parents worked in the Navy and when he was young he lived in Guantanamo Bay for a couple of years. He explained
what Noir means to him and if he thought Noir characters had to be bad people. He discussed what TV shows he likes (or liked), mentioning the Sopranos and a Canadian show called Intelligence that he said was
cancelled because of politics, specifically citing Prime Minister Stephen Harper as being the reason. Ed said his uncle was a CIA operative that was outed in the 70s (presumably in Inside the Company:
CIA Diary book). The Captain America: The Winter Soldier movie came up and he said what it was like being an extra on it and being happy it was a good film. Ed mentioned that he spends half his time writing
TVs and movie screenplays, saying he wrote a remake of Maniac Cop. Regarding Criminal, they are now hiring cast for it. There were questions from the audience and he told us who inspires him today to be a
better writer.

Stuart Immonen and Sean Phillips in Conversation. (1:01:10, 56.0mb)
While the two talked there was a slide show of art going on in the background which sometimes came up in the conversation. They started off with some very early work and how they got published. Sean talked
about inking, painting covers, photo-referencing & design. Stuart talked about using 3D models; both said they looked at other peoples sketchbooks to keep with what younger artists are doing. They discussed
the tools they used to make art with, they showed some work outside of comics that Sean did and got into page/panel design. This brought out questions from Ed Brubaker who was in the audience,
asking about the grid design used in their books (which got some laughs from the audience). Stuart talked about doing digital comics in that the entire thing was designed to be read on a tablet or phone,
and the amount of re-thinking about the effects of reading comics this way that it took, both in terms of the size of the screen and the non-traditional gutter space. There were other creators in the audience
that also began talking about contributing to digital comics (the panel became a round table discussion for a couple of minutes), Sean talked about a job he had to turn down, Stuart talked about a small
Pirates of the Caribbean story that he did in a completely different style and how it lead to the work he did on Nextwave.

The Doug Wright Awards 2014. (1:20:18, 73.5mb)
The ceremony went as follows:
Introduction of the nominee's and sponsor appreciation by Brad Mackay.
Doug Wright's youngest son Ken Wright spoke on behalf of the family.
Opening monologue by Scott Thompson.
Pigskin Peters Hat/Award: Emily Carroll for Out of Skin.
Jeet Heer explains why the jury chose Carol's work.
Don McKellar (minus 1 tooth) read the nominee's for the Spotlight Award.
Spotlight Award (AKA "The Nipper"): Steven Gilbert for The Journal of the Main Street Secret Lodge.
Nick Maandag explains why the Jury picked Gilbert's book.
Michael Hirsh gave his history in recovering and preserving the archives of the Canadian Whites.
Induction of all 200+ creators of the Canadian Whites into the Giants of the North Hall of Fame.
The last two surviving cartoonists Gerry Lazare and Jack Tramblay were there and gave their acceptance speech. They were followed by Adrian Dingles youngest son Christpher.
Best Book: Paul Joins the Scouts, Michel Rabagliati (Conundrum Press).
Closing by Brad Mackay.
Then Hope Nichols and Rachel Riley talk about the just published Nelvana of the North (created by Adrian Dingle) Collection.

Graphic Novels - Growing in a Digital World. (1:01:51, 56.6mb)
This was moderated by Calvin Reid (Publisher's Weekly). On the panel was Trudy Knudsen (Manger eContent Acquisitions, Follett), Dallas Middaugh (Director, Publisher Services) Barry Nalebuff (author, Mission in a Bottle), Rich Johnson (Founder, Brick Road Media), Greg Goldstein (President & COO, IDW) and Leyla Aker (Vice President Publishing, Viz). The group talked about digital comics in libraries. Trudy said they are very popular and they need more of them. It was said that comics are great for reluctant readers and manga is the most popular form of comics in libraries. The publishers on the panel discussed getting comics into libraries. Leyla mentioned when going digital Viz decided to build their own App instead of selling through the usual channels, because none of them could do right to left reading method digitally and also so they would get the data on their customers reading habits. IDW said they've been making books like the Artists Edition line to give people a reason to buy print as you can't replicate full sized art digitally. Leyla said Viz had worked to get day and date translations released at the same time as the Japanese publishers as a way of combating free scanlations that were coming out on the web before their version was released. Barry said Scott McCloud's book (Understanding Comics) was very useful when they hired and illustrator for his book. He also talked about the difficulties with getting media coverage because it's a business book told via comics format. Both the business and graphic novel media see it as belonging to the other and not covering it. The group had discussed the diversity of comics out there. They said comics for kids has seen a great deal of growth recently, particularly My Little Pony. Scholastic had ordered more My Little Pony books than anything they've ordered previously. The group had answered questions on how they sell a new type of product they haven't sold before and how they come up with a price point. They talked about getting journalists to cover their work. At the end they spoke about Manga by non-Japanese creators too.

The Rise of Geek Culture. (1:06:31, 60.9mb)
On the panel was Ed Catto (co-founder Bonfire Agency), Shawn Kirkham (Director, Business Development Skybound), Gerry Gladstone (Co-Owner Midtown Comics), Steve Rotterdam
(co-founder Bonfire Agency), Rob Salkowitz (Author, Comic Con and the Business of Pop Culture) and the moderator was Milton Greipp (ICV2). The panel started off with Ed Catto giving a presentation of some
numbers of how many people are involved in Geek Culture and how much money is spent. He explained the effect of Geeks opinion and how geeks become taste makers for others to follow, then how that
influences the media. New Apple and Samsung commercials that incorporates geek culture within their ads were shown to demonstrate how geek culture has entered into the mainstream. They spoke about
marketing to the different type of fans and went through some good and bad examples of companies trying to market to geeks (the touched on this topic a couple more times throughout the panel). Another topic
that came up is if we have reached "peak geek" or not. Gary was concerned about too many bad superhero movies could hurt the comics industry and said we were not too big to fail. Shawn had talked about the
success and new/odd cross promotions of the Walking Dead (including a new debt card). The group discussed efforts in getting movie/tv watchers to buy the comics. Towards the end the group had spoke about the
growth in geek girls and cosplay in particular.

Protect It and Publish It! Creating and Protecting Your Comic Book Property. (1:56:04, 106mb)
This is a 2 part panel that I've merged into a single file. Moderated by Thomas Crowell Esq. (Entertainment Attorney) with him were 2 other entertainment attorneys,
Matthew Tynan and Sheafe Walker Esq. Also with them was 3 creators, Allan Norico, David Gallaher and Alan Robert. The legal team gave a disclaimer that what they say during the panel is not legal advice.
They first talked about copyright, what those rights are, when you get those rights, what the benefits are to registering the copyright and how you can do that. They presented information about contracts, the Chain of Title,
why you would want a contract between collaborators, the legal distinction of who the author of the work is and how that is determined legally, the potential pitfalls of joint authorship, exclusive and non
exclusive rights, how ideas in themselves can't be copyrighted and what work for hire is. They also talked about the benefits of setting up an LLC, hiring an artist and work for hire agreements. Major comic
book cases were touched on briefly and they gave an intellectual properties rules of thumb. The 2nd part of the panel was more about the creative end. They went into issues of promoting what you created in
terms of pitching it to publishers and gave a run down of do's and don'ts during a pitch. They mentioned networking with publishers (and their editors) at conventions and tips about establishing a
relationship with them at the con. They spoke about negotiating a publishing deal, online submissions, tips on working with the publisher after the deal has been made. They went into royalties and talked
about how the current royalty pool works in terms of what creative role (writer, artist, inker, etc..) gets what percentage of the royalties. They quickly addressed DIY (Do It Yourself) publishing in terms
of printing, distributing and digital publishing. Then they gave a contracts rule of thumb. After both sessions they took questions from the audience. Much of the audience were
creative people. Those involved at the panel worked together on a book titled
The Pocket Lawyer for Comic Book Creators, which will be out March of 2014.

Comics, Hollywood and What Creators Need to Know. (1:24:47, 77.6mb)
This panel was moderated by Buddy Scalera. On the panel was Mike Richardson (Dark Horse), freelance writer/inker Jimmy Palmiotti and Ross Richie (Boom!)
Jimmy talked about his experience licensing Ash and Painkiller Jane. Mike talked about Dark Horse licensing comics and how his licensed work became Movies (Predator 2 is an example) and his own work being
licensed into movies. He told many stories from licensing the Mask, Time Cop and other movies. Ross explained his history of working for Malibu Comics and going away to work for Hollywood. He ran away screaming
from Hollywood and started up his own comic book publishing. Because Hollywood reads comics, they recognized his name and came after him for Boom! books. Jimmy explained what breaking down a series means
for a TV show. Ross helped manage a talk about what certain terms mean in Hollywood and the various roles that Agents, Producers, Managers and Entertainment Lawyers play and where/why you would need one.
Somebody asked about people stealing their ideas and Jimmy and Mike says it actually happens all the time. They wouldn't name names but Jimmy talked about ideas that he had pitched to particular directors
suddenly done without his involvement. He said he had a really hard lesson in a company admitting they stole the idea but to successfully litigate it would cost him 2 million dollars. Since he couldn't
afford that he had to walk away. Mike talked about getting sued for movies like the Mask and Time Cop. The talked about shopping the property around. Mike and Ross talked about first look deals what they are
and the pro's and con's of the deal. Ross Ritchie had to leave part way through. Jimmy spoke about why he's doing a lot more written work as of late and wanting to raise his profile. Mike talked about
giving Carla Speed McNeil more spotlight. Mike said thanks to the internet if you have talent it is much easier to get noticed as people are looking for talented artists. Jimmy and Mike said you can't do a
comic that is a movie pitch as you recognize right away and it's makes a bad comic. Mike said publishers that try the comic to movie business model usually fail because it takes a long time for the movie to
get made, if it gets made at all. Mike said comic creators want to keep the certain comic book related rights and you want an entertainment lawyer and they should get involved in with rest of the movie as
much as possible. Mike said Dark Horse got the rights to do Prometheus comics and he's very happy about it. Mike gave advise on how to pitch to him and recommended the Mystery Box Ted Talk. At the end Buddy
spoke against downloading comics.

Editors on Editing. (1:11:43, 65.6mb)
This panel was more about how to break into comics via pitching to editors. On the panel was Warren Simons (Valiant), Scott Allie (Dark Horse) and Chris Ryall (IDW). Moderating the panel was Buddy Scalera.
They first talked about their recent books. They then went through the do's and don'ts of pitching as a writer or artist. They talked about pitching at a con, establishing relationships, using the online
submission process. The audience asked some questions and they answered questions on how to become an editor and how to become an intern. They spoke briefly about licensing issues and what happens when a
deadline gets missed. At the end they plugged other upcoming books and Buddy asked fans not to download/torrent comic books.

CBLDF: Secret History of Comic Book Censorship. (1:00:11, 55.1mb)
On the panel was Charles Kochman (Abrams Art), Carol Tilly (Teacher/Researcher/Librarian) and Charles Brownstein (CBLDF). Carol started off the panel with reading a letter written to Wertham from a kid who
disagreed with his articles. She revealed which comic creators reached out and talked to Wertham, giving him industry related information. She delved into the first version of the ACMP code and a couple of
the people on DC's advisory committee. She said that Wertham had a particular dislike for those on the advisory committee and revealed how an unrelated negative book review caused an angry author to link
Wertham with Senator Kefauver. Carol spoke of how Gaines asked his readers to write to the Senate to defend the comic books they enjoyed and Carol found and read some of those letters. She also revealed that
200 letters were sent to the Senate and they are within the National Archives. She talked a bit about the code and the reaction to it and surprised the audience by revealing Carl Barks was seemingly in favor
of CCA censorship. She showed how Wertham altered and just made up answers to questions that his patients gave in regards to comic books to further his agenda. She ended off talking about how censorship of
comics is still alive and ongoing in her home town with books being challenged and taken out of libraries. Charles Brownstein explained how censorship was still ongoing in schools and libraries and comic
shops were still being persecuted for selling comics for adults. He talked about Manga being attacked and Ryan Matheson being held up at the Canadian border for it due to ignorance of the artform. He also said
there is now a book that helps people understand Manga. Charles Kochman revealed that Cathy Gaines is in the audience and Brownstein said they were selling a Gaines was right t-shirt with her permission.
Charles Kochman said they have a book about some of the non-EC horror comics that Wertham was not in favour of called The Horror! The Horror!: Comic Books the Government Didn't Want You To Read.

IDW: The Ultimate Panel (1:01:01, 55.8mb)
On the panel was Dirk Wood (moderator), Chris Ryall, Greg Goldstein, Darwyn Cooke and Scott Dunbier. Part way through the panel was the surprise guest Jim Steranko. They started off the panel announcing the
new Parker book is called Slayground. Darwyn said it's a short book that is one of his favourites in the Parker series and recommended it as a place to start. Because it's a shorter story, he is also
including a The Seventh, a short Eisner winning story that has not been collected yet. They also announced IDW is republishing the print version of Parker books in hardcover format with Darwyn doing 10 full
colour chapter illustrations and covers. Among the other announcements were: Artists Edition Peanuts, Kirby New Gods (issues 2, 5-8) and Dave Gibbons made a pre-recorded video to announce Watchmen - in colour
but not the full story. After Jim Steranko showed up, they announced 2 books, a bigger sized Steranko done Agents of Shield stories from Strange Tales, then a Nick Fury / Captain America book at a slightly
smaller size because the size of the paper the artists drew on shrank. Also within the Nick Fury / Captain America book will be a Steranko romance story. Jim mentioned that he did 29 comics and they've all
have been kept in print. He says he seems to have made a big impact in comics for a small amount of work. Jim told a few stories about wanting to do new work for Marvel and DC over the last 5 years but was
always turned down either because he wanted to do comics in a new format, something in his story violated the their universe or because they decided they didn't need him working on that particular character.
Darwyn mentioned said one nice thing about IDW is how quick they are in getting an answer to you. He said when Scott Dunbier started with IDW he told him about wanting to do the Parker books adaptation and
2 weeks later Scott called back, saying they got the rights and they were working on it. With DC it took them 4 years to approve the New Frontier story. There were questions from the audience about IDW
licensing properties, doing more work with John Byrne, how Darwyn adapts a book to Graphic Novel format.

Beyond the Webcomics. (1:00:12, 55.1mb)
The moderator was agent Seth Fishman. On the panel was Ryan North (Dinosaur Comics), Chris Hastings
(Dr. McNinja) and Kate Beaton ( Hark A Vagrant). The room was full and was standing room only. The
group talked about why they are starting to do work outside of webcomics. Ryan mentioned webcomics becomes a wacky resume. Chris said he once used his comic to try and get dates on Myspace. They took a show
of hands and saw plenty of people in the audience do webcomics. They all spoke about prioritizing their webcomics with other work and projects they had to turn down. Ryan discovered that with Kickstarter what
you write on there is legally binding, so he's now doing more choose your adventure books. Kate is doing a picture book for Scholastic. Kate also spoke about why she got an Agent. Chris talked about his
Longshot mini-series for Marvel and he's doing a Dr. McNinja card game. He revealed he does a live comedy show at a nearby theatre, but he never speaks about it online because he wants to get good at it first.
They all revealed a dream project they'd like to do. They also talked about Networking in Person vs. Online and working on multiple properties, including ones you don't own. They advised webcomic
creators that it's best to wait until you have enough material to hook people (like a month's worth) before you start advertising it.

Yoe! Books Presents: Fiends, Ghouls & Haunted Horror!. (50:23, 46.1mb)
Craig Yoe gave a rousing speech about the 1950's pre-code comics. Along the way he showed a number of horror comics and specific panels that was used to criticize comics. He also gave an overview of comic
book history from the 1950s in regards to Wertham and the Comics Code. He also talked about Bob Wood, Jack Cole and Wally Wood, all of whom are comic creators that had their life cut short by either suicide
or murder. He talked about the content of his books are often in the public domain, but he does respect the artists and pays them or their estate. He revealed he will be working on book of Stanley P. Morse
published comics, which were among the most gruesome of the 1950's comics.

New Transmedia Story Worlds. (56:10, 51.4mb)
I had joined the panel just after it had started. The panel was made up primarily of Starlight Runner Entertainment employees. The moderator was Jeff Gomez (CEO), on the panel was Mark Pensavalle (COO),
Chip Brown (Harper Collins Sr. VP & Publisher), Fabian Nicieza (CIO), Chrysoula Artemis (COO) and Darren Sanchez (Production Manager). Chip talked about the bible being a transmedia property and how it's
been used in a variety of media. Fabian said their proof of concept was their Hot Wheels contract. He explained Mattel came to them about how they could sell more toys. Fabian wrote 8 page mini comics for each car,
giving them a driver and self-contained but interconnected story. The story was the basis of the Hot Wheels video game and cartoon show and the show was then sold on DVD. He said they generated an additional
200 million dollars for Mattel. The group talked about working directly with James Cameron on Avatar and how James helped Fox see them as not just a marketing expense. They said their work on Avatar won't be
seen until the 2nd and 3rd movie comes out. They mentioned that large companies like Disney are not transmedia friendly as they have multiple departments and the work gets bounced around and back to them.
They talked about difficulties they have working with publishers as they are not getting the transmedia thing. They revealed they went to San Diego one year and pretended they had a product to sell just to
generate some interest in what they are doing. Currently they are doing bible related transmedia work. An audience member had brought up Marvel and they said they do get transmedia and are doing it well, but
said the stories/characters are not consistent across the mediums. They said the movie version, the comic and cartoon versions of the characters are all different. They took questions from the audience and
Fabian said creators should focus on selling to a publisher a story, and if successful then work in the transmedia. He said all transmedia has a core media that it starts from.

Creative Graphic Novels for Kids. (58:25, 53.4mb)
The panel was moderated by Chris Duffy. On the panel was Jimmy Gownley, Sheila Keenan, Nathon Fox, Paul Pope, Alexis Frederick-Frost, Andrew Arnold and Jon Chad. They talked about what goes on before they
do the first draft of the Graphic Novel. The creators said the idea being something they are so in love/obsessed with they can spend 1 or 2 years working on it full time. Sheila's book involved a lot of
research as it involves 3 wars. Also mentioned was needing to like their collaborations because they'll be working together daily the entire time. Other topics they talked about was keeping the art the same
throughout the book, creators moving from traditional comic book publishers to traditional bookstore aimed publishers who are used to marketing kids comics, if they tested their ideas on kids prior to writing or finishing
the book. Jimmy mentioned when he started Amelia Rules the traditional comic industry was actively hostile to kids comics. He said he really needed to reach out to kids to market his books. Paul talked
about how he is now interacting with all ages when in libraries and schools promoting his book. They also talked about if the hero of the book needs to be the same age as the intended readership. Paul
said he hates it when an editor imposes rules because of the way things have worked in the past. He said you are just asking for them to be broken. They spoke about influences on their current book
and what book they love that they think everybody should read. Another topic was how much dialogue they can use in kids books and if there are things they can do in kids book that they can't in adult books.

How to Get News Coverage for Small Press Publishers (50:52, 46.5mb)
This was moderated by Rik Offenberger from the First Comic News website. On the panel was
Albert Ching (Newsarma),
Glenn Hauman (ComicMix),
Tanya Tate (Justa Lotta Tanya),
Rich Johnston (Bleeding Cool),
Alan Kistler (AlanKistler.com),
Heidi MacDonald (The Beat),
Chris Thompson (Pop Culture Hound),
Holly Golightly (Jim Balent Studios),
Josh Waldrop (M1W Entertainment),
J.C. Vaughn (The Scoop)
and Bryan Young (Big Shiny Robot).
The group was there mainly to answer questions for creators/publishers in the audience. They started off
by going down the line to explain the best way to be contacted if you are looking to get your work promoted. They also gave advice on what not to do like using exclamation points in
a press release. They had talked about when not to be contacted (eg right now, as they are at a convention and theirs are piling up) and how much lead time is required for types of
coverage. Kickstarter was a big topic as everybody gets swamped with pleas to promote Kickstarter campaigns and why they rarely do them. They also talked a bit about sending them PDF
files.

Dan Parent Spotlight (46:48, 42.8mb)
This was an interview of Dan Parent by Rik Offenberger and Chris Thompson. Parent started by talking about reading comics as a kid, how we went to the Kubert school and how that
lead to a job in the Archie Comics production office. He said he worked there for 10 years getting a good on the job education, including the switch to a more digital form of
producing comics. He talked about pitching stories while at Archie and how many of them were rejected at first (and for good reason). Eventually he started getting stories approved
and he talked about some of the stories that got a lot of mainstream media coverage. Regarding stories they talked about the move to doing longer stories and using the parent
characters more. Regarding art Parent talked about working with Dan DeCarlo and drawing clothes on the female characters. They also talked about the Veronica solo series he pitched
and has been successful with Archie and the Kevin Keller character and how he came about. His work outside of Archie was talked about, including Felix the Cat, Barbie Comics,
Carney Comics and Bratz. The audience asked questions about Archie's Madhouse, his favorite Archie characters, artists outside of Archie he's currently reading. Dan mentioned
Archie's 50th Anniversary year is coming up. Some outside of comics stuff has come up, including his being on the Weakest Link and Who Wants to be a Millionaire TV shows. He also
told a funny story about being in Tijuana once.

Roman Dirge REBUILT! (42:40, 39.0mb)
This was moderated by Titan Comics senior editor Steve White. The reason Roman was "REBUILT" was due a bad accident he was in about a year ago. He was hit very hard by an SUV and
said they measured the distance he flew to be 15 feet. His leg was broken and had to be reattached to him. He has lost some of the bone in his leg and now needs a walking stick to
get around. Roman talked about the time it took him to recover. He says since being hit has made him more motivated to get work done. He showed art on 3 new projects he is currently
working on, this including a graphic novel called Monocle, a superhero book called Stringbean (it's very dark and strange) and a TV show called Battleboy. He had also talked about
Lenore and upcoming plans for her and any other media possibilities with the character. He revealed that other strange things have been happening to him that could have seriously
injured or killed him since the accident.

8th Annual All Star Podcasters Panel (53:35, 49.0mb)
On this panel was a who's who of long running podcasters. Moderating the panel was John Siuntres (Word Balloon),
on it was fellow podcasters Brian Christman (Comic Geek Speak),
John Mayo (Comic Book Page,
Heidi MacDonald (Publishers Weekly Comics World),
Jimmy Aquino (Comic News Insider),
Conor Kilpatrick (iFanboy) and
Ben Blacker (Nerdist). The group had talked about digital comics and argued about digital vs print sales.
They had also talked about comic book movies. Heidi brought up at the big 2 are not creating major artists anymore. They also talked about 'event' comics. The group
talked about sponsorships (one major sponsor was there in the audience) in terms of making money from the podcast, the length of their shows, how open podcasting is now and how
professional one has to be to do the show. The group ended the panel by talking about what comics they are enjoying now.

Family Feud: The Comics Blogging Panel (53:38, 49.1mb)
The panel was moderated by a very hungry Tom Spurgeon (The Comics Reporter). On the panel was
Heidi MacDonald (The Beat),
Tony Isabella (Tony Isabella's Bloggy Thing),
Alexa Dickman (Ladies Making Comics),
Rich Johnston (Bleeding Cool),
and Graeme McMillan (Many different sites).
There was a very large
audience and Tom joked about the panel being a pre-show for the next panel (Mega64: Decade of Perfection) which got the audience laughing. The group introduced themselves particularly to the
crowd who were not familiar with them. Tom had received some questions from his readers and asked them. Among the topics talked about writing in a way to generate hits from search
engines, (eg using words like exclusive, which generate traffic) or topics that they might not normally cover and how it may compromises their writing. Lots of discussion was around
those that have writers contributing to their blog. Among the topics for them were letting contributors develop their voice, how much they pay their writers and if it's hypocritical
to write negatively about companies exploiting their talent while they pay their own writers little to nothing. The amounts being paid to contributors was revealed and what other
forms of compensation they are getting. For those that work (or had worked) in print how writers got paid was discussed. The group also talked about creator rights issues, gender
issues, creators in need and they also took questions from the audience.

Tony Isabella Spotlight (51:39, 47.2mb)
Mark Evanier interviewed Tony about his career in comics. They talked about his getting involved in comic fandom, his comic reading as a kid, particularly FF annual #1, his love
of giant monsters, his living in New York City and the seedy hotel on Times Square he lived in. He spoke about his editorial work at Marvel, writing books under tight deadlines
when other people blew them, his favorite artists to work with, in particular Frank Robins and Eddie Newell, him getting a chance to work with Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby. Tony
revealed that he wrote a large, multi issue Captain America story only to later find out that Kirby had already been hired to take over the book after a few issues. He also spoke
a bit about co-writing with Bob Ingersol. He said said he would have loved to have more time on Daredevil and Ghost Rider. He said his original champions pitch was Iceman and
Angel buddy book with them on the road getting involved in certain situations. Said he would still liked to have written that. Tony also won an inkwell award for his work in comics
and Tony gave his love to the convention for having him as a guest.

Jose Delbo Spotlight (52:58, 48.4mb)
Moderated by his daughter/agent Silvana Frontera. Jose talked about differences between European and US comics. How he worked on superheroes except for the Flash. He didn't want to
draw him. He loves doing Westerns and the Lone Ranger in particular. He did a number of other media type adaptations over many years, including the Beatles Yellow Submarine, Monkee's
Comic Book, Transformers and NFL Superpro among others. He said he liked working on the Monkee's because he can be comical and not be so strictly on model as he was with other books.
Jose revealed that his father wanted him to be a lawyer and was worried that he would be poor as an artist. When he got his first cheque he gave it to his father and he never cashed
it, he saved it as a symbol of his son having made it and making good living. Jose talked about learning under Carlos Clemen (a famous Argentina artist). He would move to Brazil to
work. His wife had a uncle who was an US citizen and asked him if he'd like to come to USA, he said yes and came over. He also told a story about almost getting drafted to go to
Vietnam, he told them he was married with 2 kids and they put him at the bottom of the list to put into service. He said he is happy for comic book conventions because 8 year olds do
not know what comic books are, that blew his mind and he knew comics were in trouble then. He said he finds artists today too similar in style and colourists don't believe that white
is a colour. He talked about his love of Joe Kubert and working as a teacher in his school. He talked about his former Dell editor/writer DJ Arneson. He said Dell/Western destroyed
all the original art, but he knew a kid who spoke Spanish in the production dept and he snuck him some of his art back, he mentioned getting some of his Turok art, but he didn't get
any of his Lone Ranger which is disappointing for him. He also said credits were not allowed in those books but he would sneak his name in the rocks of Turok. Jose was asked about his
relationship with editors. He mentioned Paul Levitz came by and asked him how he was doing earlier which he thought was very nice. He told a funny story about a kid who wanted a
transformers sketch at a convention but he couldn't remember how to draw the character. As he was drawing the kid kept correcting him and a reporter was nearby and wrote a story in
the paper about a kid teaching him how to draw, which was embarrassing at the time. He said when he was drawing Transformers he was given the toys to help towards refrence but he had
to keep his grandkids from playing with them. He felt the superheroes today have bodies that are too super. Said Superman gets his powers from another planet and doesn't need Arnold
Schwarzenegger's body and Batman is an intelligent detective. Said they have him flying and super strong now. In regards to working digital, he only uses computers for reference
photos. Regarding inkers he liked, in named Al Williamson in particular. He said for a while he wasn't inking his work and Al called him and asked why. He said he didn't know why and
it wasn't his decision, but he would ask that his pencils would go to him. So he called his editor and asked for Al and then Al got Transformers pages to ink. Al hated them,
only did 5 or 6 pages and quit. Jose would have liked to ink his own work but he couldn't justify the time to do it. He mentioned doing some work on a new Transformer book but
couldn't say what. Jose also got an inkpot award from the Comic Con organization.

Kim Thompson Tribute (46:55, 42.9mb)
Kim Thompson was a long time co-owner/editor of Fantagraphics who recently passed away due to cancer. On the panel was Eric Reynolds, Gary Groth, Diana Schutz, Gilbert and
Jaime Hernandez. Gary talked about Kim first getting involved with Fantagraphics. Diana talked about first meeting Gary and Kim. She said Kim would later reach out to her and other
women, asking them to contribute to the Amazing Hero magazine, which was very rare at the time. Hernandez Bros and Eric talked about meeting Kim and working with him. Gary talked
about how he, Kim and Harlan Ellison met in order to try and make up after the lawsuit, but Harlan did not like Kim's review of Frank Millers work and they instead got into a huge
argument over it. Diana talked about working with Kim over the last few years doing translations. Gary talked about how they all lived in the Fantagraphics house and Kim used to
regularly work in his bathrobe. He would always be wearing shorts or sweatpants unless it was something super formal. Gary said Kim had knowledge about what was good cartooning. The
group talked about Kim not having any guilty pleasures and loved Brian De Palma movies. They all said he was always working, including late at night or very early in the morning.
Gilbert thinks there would be no Vertigo or many independent publishers around if it was not for Kim's groundbreaking work wih Fantagraphics. Eric talked about Kim championing some
artists, including Jason which he wasn't convinced would do so well.

Carmine Infantino Tribute (49:22, 45.1mb)
On the panel were Jon B, Cooke, Elliot S! Maggin, Paul Levitz, Martin Pasko and moderating the panel was J. David Spurlock. Carmine Infantino was a long time extremely important artist,
editor and publisher, much of his work for DC Comics. Elliot talked about Carmine patching up the many fights he and Julie Schwartz had. Both he and Martin said Carmine wasn't
pretentious. Elliot told a story about Carmine and Julie getting into an argument and Julie said "I was here before you and I'll be here after your gone!" and Carmine just laughed,
he didn't let stuff said during heated arguments bother him. Paul talked about how after the 1966 Batman show started to drop in ratings nobody at DC had any idea of where to take
the company. Carmine provided DC with a direction and really experimented in ways that publishers didn't do prior to that. Today publisher's experiment the ways Carmine did back then,
trying all sorts of new ideas with different creators. Martin talked about Carmine's cover design and David said all the DC covers were pretty much laid out by Carmine from when he
was art director and on up. David mentioned that as Carmine moved up the ladder at DC, he kept doing his old jobs. One time an HR person within the company was reviewing who did what
within the organization and they told Carmine he did the work of 5 people. David revealed that Stan Lee had offered Carmine a job in the mid 1960s and DC promoted him in order to keep
him. Martin and David talked about the many behind the scene changes that Carmine was responsible for that he doesn't get credit for, both small and large. David said one of them was
ordering his artists to update their swipe files so that females were not drawn with 1950's style clothing. They talked about how many artists got their start at DC comics, with
Carmine liking their art and telling editors to get the artist a script. Paul talked about how when Carmine took over, he broke down the BS formality at DC at the time and made it
much more open and about creating good comics. He said Carmine made DC more open to fans and solicited their opinions, much more than Marvel did at the time. Elliot talked about him
suggesting DC do a Superman movie and writing a pitch, Julie disagreed, thinking superheroes were over and he went to Carmine. Carmine sent Elliot and another writer to talk with
Mario Puzo about it. Paul revealed that in the early 60s, Carmine won the best artist in fandom awards 4 times in a row and people don't realize how popular he was with fans during
that time. David said Carmine really went to bat to hire Kirby back, despite resistance within DC and he went to bat for many other artists as well. David and Martin said Carmine was
really influential and that Bernie Krigstein and John Romita learned from him.

Jeffery Brown Spotlight (49:18, 45.1mb)
This was moderated by Leigh Walton. Jeff talked about getting into comics, his autobiographical books and how they started. He said people in his life don't appear to be too bothered
by their depiction because he makes himself look very unflattering. He talked about the style of art he chooses for which project. He talked about Bighead and how it came about.
Leigh gave the reason for the small sized Jeffery Brown books and why they are all different sizes. They then talked about his Star Wars books, Darth Vader and Son, Star Wars: Vader's
Little Princess and they revealed a new Star Wars: Jedi Academy book and showed a video trailer for it. His next autobiographical book is about his wife's pregnancy and his relationship with his father. His
father is a minister but he is no longer practicing religion. They talked about his use of colour on the books. They gave a handout showing a sample of his upcoming work to those the
audience that asked questions. Jeff revealed he wants to do a book about the business side of comic art. He is also a teacher and those types of questions get asked a lot by his
students.

Joe Kubert Tribute (48:58, 44.8mb)
Moderated by Mark Evanier. On the panel was Sergio Aragonés, Paul Levitz, Marv Wolfman, Tom Yeates, Jon B. Cooke and Russ Heath. The panelists signed 3 books about Joe Kubert by
Bill Schelley which would be auctioned off for Hero Initiative. The panelists talked about Joe and what they liked about him. Sergio was always amazed on how fast Kubert drew and he
was drawing realistically. Paul said his funeral drew such a large crowd they had to borrow police from 2 nearby towns, considering the burial was done by Jewish traditions (where
it's done fairly quickly) it was an amazing crowd of people that showed up. Many more would have showed up if there was more notice. Marv talked about Joe teaching him about how to
pace a story by taking one of his stories and ignoring his art direction and drawing it his way. He said Joe went over the art and explained what he was doing and why and that was an
enormous eye opener for Marv and it taught him a lot about writing. Marv also told a story about art that needed to be inked right away to make deadline and the only pen in the area
was a lettering pen, which has a very fat nub and is not something you draw or ink with. Joe made that pen sing and did a great job of inking despite the tool not being fit for the job.
Marv also talked about when he was an assistant editor under Kubert he would often have to completely re-write Bob Kanigher stories for Joe. Tom Yeates said he met Joe before he
started the school and connected with him right away, Joe then called him up when he was starting his school. While Tom was there he started getting work and tried to draw like Joe
in terms of surface detail, but found it wasn't working and he learned from Joe about the under the surface detail that makes his drawings work. Jon talked about Joe using the school
to give back to creators as Joe had started when he was 11 and learned from multiple artists while sweeping floors at a comic sweatshop. Russ mentioned Joe gave hard backslaps and
told some funny stories about Joe. He also said that inking Joe was very hard. Sergio told a funny story about how Joe said he was going to take his 5 kids, wife and mobile home and
go on vacation. Sergio told him he should go to Mexico and drew him a map of Mexico and everywhere they should go and how they would get there. A few months later Joe told Sergio
that he had actually used his map to go into Mexico and thanked him for it being so accurate. Sergio was stunned that he would go into Mexico with his family just based on his drawn
map. Mark Evanier told an early San Diego con story about Joe doing a fund raising sketch for the con and a friend of his was too late to bid on it and lost it (price $300), Mark
talked to Joe and he quickly did another sketch that was even better than the first one and the winner of the previous sketch wanted the new one instead. Marv and Paul said Joe was
also a very good businessman too, something that was pretty rare back in those days.

Russ Heath Spotlight (55:38, 50.9mb)
This was moderated by Mark Waid. Russ talked about where he grew up and his early influences. He mentioned his father was a cowboy among his many other jobs, but as a result he
watched a lot of western related serials. His father would tell him that if the actor was wearing a flowery shirt or something that the character wasn't a real cowboy. Russ took from
that that when writing/drawing fiction you need to be true to whatever you are depicting. He said he got started in comics when at 16 his father took him to Holyoke and he was given
a script, but was told he couldn't draw it in pen. He had to buy a brush and after a few days he figured out how to use it. This stunned Mark as some artists take years to figure out
how to use a brush. Russ talked about joining the air force. He mentioned he was in and out of high school as he did not have good marks. He said prior to drawing for a living he was
a lifeguard and ran a scuba diving club. He did some advertising work, but then had a wife and kid and needed more money. The advertising paid $35 a week, he was looking for work
during lunch hour and found Stan still working. Stan offered him $75 a week to draw for him, which he did. Russ liked doing westerns but didn't like doing Batman because of all the
straight lines on the buildings. Said he knew Harvey Kurtzman from Marvel as he was doing the 1 page Hey Look! gags. They had lunch together a couple of times and that lead to Harvey
giving him some work at EC comics. Russ talked about Kanigher and not in a positive way. He said he was also friends with Ross Andru and Gray Morrow. He talked about moving to
California in the 70s and working in animation. He also worked on Annie Fanny for Playboy while in the Playboy mansion. He was going to quit Annie when Hugh called him up, doubled
his salary and offered to pay him to move to Chicago, which he did. He also told a funny story about sabotaging Will Elder's paint pants. He talked about Archie Goodwin and said he
was a very good editor and visual writer. He mentioned on an script Archie drew stick figure layouts of his story. Russ didn't look at them and drew his own stick figure layouts.
When he was done he compared the two and found all but 1 of the layouts matched exactly and there was about 40 panels. Of newer artists he likes Adam Hughes. Russ also answered
questions on National Lampoon, inking Micheal Golden and other artists in general. He also told about becoming fast friends with Dave Stevens when they worked together at Hanna-Barbera.
He said they both caused chaos there.

Gerry Conway Spotlight (53:09, 48.6mb)
This was Conway doing a Q&A with the audience. Among the topics he answered questions on were the creation of the Punisher, the bridge Gwen Stacy was thrown off and the snap sound
effect, how he got into Marvel, DC comics being like Mad Men TV Show in the 60s, how he broke into DC comics, how he then got into Marvel comics and some of his reasons for going
back and forth between the companies. He revealed after Gwen's death he didn't read any fan mail or do conventions for a long time, why Gwen never came back, the Clone storyline,
villains who were often throw aways like The Grizzly, the issues comics are facing today, how Phantom Stranger at DC was his first regular gig, his moving into writing TV and films.
He also said that after writing Law and Order Hollywood thinks he can't write superhero movies. He is now writing a YA novel, he also told a funny story about the Spider-Mobile, both
how it came about and it coming back one day in an unexpected way.

That 70's Panel (1:20:25, 73.6mb)
Moderated by Mark Evanier. On the panel was Tony Isabella, Val Mayerik, Elliot S! Maggin, Martin Pasko and George Perez. They talked about their 1st pro sale, when they felt they
made it, "Oh Wow!" moments on working with their heroes. They explained was different about their generation from the previous one. Martin talked about a sad story of meeting a poor
Bill Finger who told him to "always get the credit." The group talked about royalties. Mark Evanier told a funny story about being the 1st person to use express mail for DC. The group
talked about how express mail changed the industry in both good and bad ways. Mark also told a funny story about being in a strip club with other artists that were also using Fed Ex.
The group also talked about sexism in the industry back then.

The Best and Worst Manga in 2013 (47:47, 43.7mb)
Moderated by Deb Aoki, on the panel was Brigid Alverson, David Brothers, Chris Butcher and Shaenon Garrity. The group talked about the best manga in various categories and where it
could be bought at the con (or seen online). They were fairly quick as they ran through the titles and Deb had a dinger if the people talked too long. They had all taken turns
talking about their favourite books, sometimes 2 people would talk about the same book. They had pointed out that Fantagraphics is not publishing any bad manga right now. When they
went through the worst list some of the best books were on that list too which generated a crowd reaction and debate among the panelists. They also had an under rated section too.
Towards he end they were short of time and really rushed through the last of the books. You can find this list online here.

Comic Arts Conference Session #22: Superman On Trial: The Secret History of the Siegel and Shuster Lawsuits
(50:36, 46.3mb)
Moderated by Heidi MacDonald, on the panel was Jeff Trexler and Brad Ricca. They talked about how the lawsuits became part of the superman mythos now. Ricca talked about how
Donenfeld actually had published the Lone Ranger but the creator took it back and thinks that had a lot to do with Donenfeld wanting to own and keep Superman. The group talked
about what if scenarios. Jeff talked about the early 90s settlements between Siegel and Shuster families that are at this time in effect (and might remain that way). Brad also
talked about Joe Shuster's last years and how it wasn't all doom and gloom. He had been married once (but divorced, his wife was into a cult) and had a girlfriend. Also on the
panel and spoke towards the end was Peter M. Coogan, who said he had some some research for the DC side. Also in the audience was Wayne Smith, Senior Vice President, Senior
Litigation & Chief Patent Counsel at Warner Bros. Entertainment Group of Companies and Lillian Laserson, Senior Vice President and General Counsel of DC Comics Inc. Lillian gave a
what if senario at the end of the panel believing that if Siegel and Shuster not sued DC in 1947 they would have been treated the same way Bob Kane was treated and Bob died a very
wealthy man. [Jamie's note: This is bullshit in my opinion and other comic historians I've talked to also do not agree with this scenario.]

Jerry Ordway Spotlight (52:36, 48.1mb)
DC Editor Mike Carlin moderated the panel and joked at the beginning it was the spotlight on Dan Jurgens panel (who was in the audience). Jerry talked about where he grew up, his doing finishes on other artists pencils, getting penciling work, also inking John Byrne's pencils,
always needing to be working and says it throws you off your rhythm to take a few days break. He talked about periods where he got really swamped, one time he had to do Fantastic Four,
Superman and Crisis of Infinite Earths #5 at once. He talked about working on the Superman relaunch with Byrne and Marv Wolfman. How he took an active role in plotting Superman, then
took over writing it. Carlin said the 'weekly' Superman books were a real team effort where everybody pitched in, he mentioned Roger Stern was really strong and keeping continuity
straight and clear for everybody across all the books. Ordway revealed that Byrne was originally going to do Shazam. He had done colouring for the books and used watercolour on the
covers. He also explained his process for creating a comic.

Dan Jurgens Spotlight (52:53, 48.4mb)
This was also moderated by Mike Carlin, who again joked this was the Jon Bogdamov panel. Jurgens talked about growing up in a small town and occasionally hanging out wiht Curt Swan. He loved the 60's Batman TV show and was
introduced to comics by seeing his friends read some after it. The first comic he bought was Superman. They talked about his family's reaction to becoming an artist. He said when he
was a teenager he loved Simonson's Manhunter and wrote and drew a Manhunter story. He sent it to DC and somebody sent it to Simonson. Walt wrote Jurgens a letter asking if he could
keep the story in exchange for a Manhunter drawing. He agreed and Simonson sent him a really great full colour large sized drawing. Jurgens revealed he showed his work to Mike Grell
when he was in the area, and Grell suggested him to DC as a replacement for him on Warlord. DC had him and another artist do a 5 page tryout and he won the job. He talked about how
he got to start writing and how he got the Superman job. He also talked about the creation of Booster Gold. They then talked about the Death of Superman and one of the reasons it was
done was do to a negative reaction to not getting to do the Lois Lane marriage and the popularity of Image Comics. They said that all the drew designs for Doomsday and voted and
Jurgens design had won the vote. They talked about the major media coverage the story got and how they originally planned to bring Superman backed got changed to something more epic
in nature. The destruction of Coast City was volunteered by the editor of Green Lantern who very much wanted to tie into what was happening with Superman. Louise Simonson suggested
doing the different Superman when they did the return and Jurgens agreed to let his Cyborg version become the bad guy. Jurgens talked about what it's like seeing Booster Gold on TV
and also his Marvel work. Along them was Superman with long hair after he returned, the red underwear, if death of Superman will be adapted into other media Armegeddon 2001 with
Monarch and working digitally. He says he still sends the physical boards to inkers to work on and will continue to do so until he can't any longer.

Fans vs Pros Trivia Challenge (47:43, 43.6mb)
The fans were Peter Svensson, David Oates and Tom Galloway and the pro's were Len Wein, Elliot S! Maggin and Martin Pasko. The question asker was Derek McCaw.
I was asked to be the official score keeper. The topic was characters celebrating their 50th anniversary. Tom Galloway was in top form this panel and answered a lot of the questions
single handedly. Len answered some correct questions on the Pro side and Elliot S! Maggin answered one question in a hilarious, not the answer we were looking for way, but we took as
true. All throughout the panel the jokes were flying fast and furious. In the end the Fan side one 360 to 110.

Full 2013 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards (2:40:55, 147mb)
The 2013 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards was held in the Indigo Room at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront.
The welcome was done by Jackie Estrada, Eisner Awards Administrator.
Among the presenters are Kayre and Bill Morrison, Maurice LaMarchie, Lauren Tom & David Herman, Chris Hardwick, Milestone Media founders Denys Cowan, Michael Davis and Derek T. Dingle, Edward James Olmos, Becky Cloonan, Ellen Forney,
James Marsters, Robert Ben Garant, Thomas Lennon, Neil Gaiman and Jonathan Ross. The Bill Finger Award was presented by Mark Evanier. The Spirit of Comics Retailer
Award was presented by Joe Ferrara. The Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award was presented by Ruth Clampett. Maggie Thompson did the Memoriam.
The Winners can be found at the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards page.

Note: Friday May 10th was Librarian & Educator day. For the general public TCAF was May 11-12th.

Comics Defense 101 (1:10:03, 64.1mb)
Moderated by Robin Brenner and on the panel was Gene Ambaum, Charles Brownstein, Diana Maliszewski, Rebecca Scoble and Eva Volin. This panel was about challenges to Graphic Novels, which if
successful can result in the book being removed them from the library or School. They started off talking about their more bizarre challenges, everything from Jeff Smith's Bone to Phoebe Gloeckner's A Child's Life.
They also talked about push back against comics both from the communities they are in and from staff within the library or school. The librarians and teachers in the audience
asked questions on how to deal with situations they are currently facing. One librarian told a funny story about how a child in her middle school had the Walking Dead TPDs and was
renting them out to his classmates to read at $2 a book, but wanted to house them in the library.

Bill Amend and Raina Telgemeier conversation (54:46, 50.1mb)
This was mainly Raina interviewing Bill but Bill also asked Raina some questions about her career. The panel started with Bill explaining he did a comic strip in a thing
called a newspaper (and showed a really old newspaper, like it's something most people don't know about, which generated laughs). He had a sample of his strips that he put on screen
and read them in voices. He did this because he learned not to assume that everybody knows his comic strip. Among the topics discussed was pitches prior to Foxtrot.
Bill's education and his original career plan. He talked about the Foxtrot children's book called AAAA! and the reason why it was published. Bill also talked about his self published
collection of strips formatted for the iPad. Bill revealed how much of Foxtrot he is creating now and what else he is doing with his time. He answered some questions from the audience
and spoke about exchanging letters with Bill Watterson. Raina talked about how comic strips were her artistic influence and how when she was 10 a local teacher handed her a bunch of
early Foxtrot comics he photocopied and she had the opportunity to have her art reviewed by Bill but never followed up on it.

The State of YA (Young Adult) Comcs (54:18, 49.7mb)
Moderated by Gina Gagliano, Eva Volin, Robin Brenner, Cecil Castellucci, Svetlana Chmakova, Faith Erin Hicks and John Green talks about problems with the YA comics market and what
they thought the market needed. They talked about a trend of publishers doing adaptations instead of original work. They all mentioned they like to see more ethnic diversity in the
lead characters in YA, and they are hoping for a watershed book that really hits it big that will convince publishers to invest more in doing original work and supporting it. Other
topics discussed was how in YA prose they can do things like a sex scene that they can't do in a YA comic. The topic of Manga came up a lot in regards to it's content and it's
limitations. They also took questions from the audience.

Comics and Accessibility (47:06, 43.1mb)
Tory Woollcott was the presenter of this panel. She talked about literacy and how she thinks it's should be about our ability to understand vs. our ability to read. She read from her
book Mirror Mind which is about her experience growing up and being dyslexic. She talked about her experience with kids with a learning disability and explains the
label of being illiterate (and by extension, stupid) creates life long self esteem issues that prevents kids from reaching their full potential in life. She also says it's important
to try find these kids and reach out to help them because they won't talk about their problem. She gave examples of books that help kids with leaning disabilities like wordless books
for various age groups and graphic novel adaptations of more famous books. She answered questions from the audience about dealing with people who feel that reading comics isn't
“real” reading and other stereotypes about comics. She also talked about her 5 ticks on what moves a book out of all ages category and into a higher age bracket.

Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez interview by Tom Spurgeon (1:38:35, 90.2mb)
This was a special ticketed event held on Friday night. It was a Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez interview by Tom Spurgeon. To start off the night Ab Velasco of the Toronto Reference
Library talked about why the library hosts TCAF and why they think the event is great. Then TCAF organizer Chris Butcher came on and talked a bit about his history with the Beguiling
and TCAF. Tom then proceeded with the interview. While Tom spoke he showed pictures of the Hernandez brothers art and a few pictures of them. Among the topics they talked
about was when they knew they would be doing comics for a living, changing the format of Love and Rockets while it was being published, their place in comics when they started eg,
not underground or mainstream, doing longer stories within Love and Rockets, their work outside of Love and Rockets and why they did them, Love and Rocket covers, character design,
drawing with a 6 panel grid, being at this for 30 years and how it's like to be the older established pro in comics industry. They also answered some questions from the audience.

Comics Adaptations (58:06, 53.2mb)
On the panel were creators who had adapted a book (or book series) into a graphic novel. The creators were Hope Larson, Raina Telgemeier, Daniel Lafrance and Svetlana Chmakova.
The panel was moderated by Scott Robins. The group had talked about what makes a good adaptation, why they chose to adapt somebody else's work, the positive and challenging parts
of doing comic adaptations, working with the author or their estate if they are no longer alive, editing the book as they are adapting it in particular with modifying dialogue,
what they learn and take to their own works after adapting somebody else's story and if they would let somebody adapt their own creator owned work into another medium.

Michel Rabagliati Spotlight (42:51, 39.2mb)
Brigid Alverson interviews Michel Rabagliati on his series of Graphic Novels. The two talked about the new book Paul joins the Scouts. He mentions that it takes place when the FLQ
(a Quebec Terrorist group) were bombing mailboxes and that environment is the backdrop of the story. He also talks about the catholic aspect of the book and they are highly
involved with the scouting organization. Rabagliati also talked about his work in general, saying the stories are 80% autobiographical. He revealed his process of how he creates
his books, going from writing to drawing. He explained where computers take part in the creative process and how he got his daughter involved in doing the toning of the book. He
also talked about the books being translated from Quebec French to different languages. Rabagliati revealed a bit about his 8th book that he is working on now.

Writing Life (55:41, 50.9mb)
On this panel were creators that did autobiographical non-fiction Graphic Novels. They were Derf, Lucy Knisley, Ulli Lust and Raina Telgemeier. The group talked about their books.
They felt there was a difference between non-fiction and memoir books and spoke about how different people remember events differently. Derf spoke about how he was able to go back
and talk to his high school friends about events with Jeffery Dahmer and revealed that people usually remembered things pretty much the same way. They also talked about depicting
other people they know (eg family members) and if their reaction to it changes the way they tell a story. The group talked about if they leave stuff out of their comics and if some
personal stories are "not for sale." This panel was moderated by Robin Brenner.

Michael Kupperman Spotlight (49:58, 45.7mb)
Michael Kupperman entertains the crowd by reading some of his comics and showed an animated short. Among the comic he read from was one that was supposed to be in the Greatest
American Comics series, but was rejected due to legal concerns. Kupperman answers questions from moderator Jacquelene Cohen and the audience. Among the topics discussed was his
children affecting his humor, his stand up comedy, how "dream logic" affects his work, pop culture influences, characters he likes to use, the changes in his art over the years.

The Doug Wright Awards (1:30:52, 83.1mb)
The ceremony went as follows:
Introduction of nominee's and sponsor appreciation by Brad Mackay.
Opening monologue by Scott Thompson.
Pigskin Peters Hat/Award: David Collier for Hamilton Illustrated (Wolsak & Wynn).
Seth gives an appreciation of David's work (until David stops him by smacking him with a seat cushion).
Spotlight Award (AKA "The Nipper"): Nina Bunjevac for Heartless (Conundrum Press).
Julie Delporte gives an appreciation of Nina Bunjevac's book.
Albert Chartier was inducted into The Giants Of The North hall of fame.
An appreciation was done by Jimmy Beaulieu and Guy Badeaux (Bado).
Best Book: The Song of Roland by Michel Rabagliati (Conundrum Press).
Joe Ollmann gives an appreciation of Michel Rabagliati and explains why the jury chose his book.
Closing by Brad Mackay.

Integrating Comics into the Common Core (48:57, 44.8mb)
Moderating the panel was Josh Elder who is involved with Reading with Pictures.com On the panel was Carol Tilley from University of Illinois and Jim McClain.
Josh talked about Reading with Pictures and how it's purpose is to make graphic novel text books that could be used in class. He showed examples already done,
one part by Roger Landridge of Muppets fame. Jim McClain is a math teacher who often heard that GNs could teach any subject except math. Challenge accepted he said.
He produced a comic book at his expense that had a team with math names and type powers and they get into problems that require math to resolve. He was selling the print edition
at his booth, but a digital version is on Comixology. The book is called Solution Squad. Carol Tilley talked about her role as a teacher for Librarians trying to expand the use of
graphic novels in classrooms and libraries. Questions were asked and answered towards the end of the panel.

Silver Age Trivia Challenge! (45:51, 41.9mb)
Mr. Silver Age Craig Shutt moderates an Silver Age Trivia Challenge between Mark Waid and 5 fans. The fans are: Mike Chary, Jason Fliegel, Mike Sangiacomo, Jim Caldwell and Doug Tonks.
The microphone is by the 5 fans so you can hear them deliberate their answers. A mix of Marvel and DC questions were asked about a wide area of topics, from identifying the a
villain by their first line if dialogue in a comic to whether a DC story was true, imaginary, a dream or a hoax. Do you know who Sif's brother is? Who is the first super villain Daredevil
fought? Who was the first DC Silver Age Superhero to debut in their own ongoing title? Or What does Superman have to write on the blackboard when he's called into court? The answers are
are revealed along with other brain devouring bits of Silver Age comic trivia. This was conduction on a stange located on the showroom floor, so some background noise is present.

Digital First Comics: The New Trend (56:57, 52.1mb)
On the panel are John D. Roberts co-founder of Comixology, writer Mark Waid, artists Peter Krouse, James Tynnion IV, and Reilley Brown. They talk about the new trend which is comics
appearing digitally first, be it for free or for sale, then in print if the creators want to. Waid talked about seeing the print costs of monthly comics while working at Boom! and
deciding to sell his print collection and start up Thrillbent, his online comics website. He and the artists talk about doing comics in a landscape format and also using the web's
technology to change how they tell stories. Particularly they mentioned horror comics can be done better as there are more chances to surprise people. John D. Roberts talked about
Comixology's new indy/self publishers portal where people can submit their own comics to be published on Comixology. They showed a number of books that are already on available for
purchase on their site now. Waid also announced that Thrillbent is starting a kids comic section on his site, with the comics being done by the Aw Yeah Comics group (Franco Aureliani,
Art Baltazar, and Marc Hammond).

Comix Chix with Kate Kotler - LIVE (1:00:42, 55.5mb)
Moderated by Katie Kotler, on the panel was artist Amy Reader, Game Developer Jen Aprahamian, editor & blogger Heidi McDonald, blogger Jill Pantozzi, artist Jenny Frison, and actress
& entrepreneur Ashley Eckstein. The group first talked about getting into comics and eventually the controversies involving women in comics particularly in fandom and the way women are
portrayed in comics and games. A point hit on at the end was the lack information on the demographic of those purchasing their comics. Those within the comic industry mentioned that
their editors have told them they don't know who is buying their comics today, they only know what sold well recently. The audience also asked questions as well.

I Have No Sewing Machine, but I Must Cosplay! (1:02:44, 57.4mb)
On the panel was Chris Troy (cosplayer), Meryle Idzerda and Lyndsey Cepak (both costume makers). They had talked about not being ashamed about buying or having a costume made for you.
They said cosplaying is about having fun and not to let other peoples opinions about the "proper" way to cosplay get in the way of that. They gave lots of advise on where to get
costumes or parts of costumes, the pitfalls of buying costumes and places where there are great do it yourself tutorials. They also went into the types of materials to use that look
good, are light and easy to work with. Lyndsay also advised when starting to cosplay to do something simple and progress there (if you want to). She told a horror story of trying to
do a full Iron Man costume saying how much time and money she spent on it and eventually had to give up on it. The group also answered questions and gave tips to the cosplayers in
the audience.

The CHEW Panel (1:00:58, 55.8mb)
John Layman and Rob Guillory start of the panel by announcing the TV deal is dead, knowing that's what everybody wants to know. He explained what happened with it and why he thinks
Chew won't be done as a Live Action TV series. They spend the hour answering questions from the audience and explaining what they plan on doing with Chew outside of comics.
John goes into how Chew started and the how he ended up hiring Rob to draw it. John revealed when the series is going to end and at least 1 character who will live to the end.
The group talked about funny comic industry in jokes that's within the series. Rob also talks a bit about his history working in the comic industry prior to Chew. The two also answered
questions from the audience.

Derf Backderk on My Friend Dahmer (54:03, 49.4mb)
Derf Backderf talked about his Graphic Novel My Friend Dahmer. He explained he was a friend and a fan of Dahmer in high school in the 1970s. He showed lots of pictures of Dahmer back
then. He talked about the strange antics that Dahmer in high school that was (then) funny to him and his friends. He also talked about how the media, from the top to the bottom of the
respectability scale were leaving messages on his answering machine and were parked outside his home and banging on his door at 6AM to get an interview. Backderf talked also about
the history of the book and how he spent 20 years researching the book, from talking to his old high school classmates to going back to his high school and getting into Dahmer's old
house. Derf answered questions from the audience. The last bit of the panel got cut off due to space on the recorder.

Exorcising the Spectore of the Fake Geek Girl: Discussing Geek Culture, Gate-Keeping and Sexism (1:01:30, 56.3mb)
Sponsored by ChicagoNerds.com and moderated by Carlye Frank, Michi Trota, Dawn Xiana Moon, Erin Tipton, Laura Koroski &
Karlyn Meyer talk about the supposed fake geek girl and why people are so focused on the topic as of late. The group talks about "Gate Keeping", the process where other geeks try to determine who can
and can't call themselves a geek. The group had asked the women in the audience how many "geek credentials" questioned and almost all of them raised their hands. They also talked
about it not just happening by men to women, but how other women did it too (with one of the panelists admitting having done it in the past). They also went into how really attractive
people go through this as well.

Ty Templeton's How To Write a Graphic Novel (47:32, 43.5mb)
Ty talked about Jim Shooter's theory of the triage of storytelling. With Information, Change and Emotion. He first disabused that
people want to read your GN unless it was really compelling and told people new information in some manner. He laid out 5 types of stories,
and 6 flavours of fiction. He used several volunteers from the audience to represent the flavours and with the crowd they can up with 3 ideas,
that they ran through the flavours to see if there was enough of them to make an interesting story. Throughout the panel Ty walked around and
engaged the audience. This was a shortened version of lesson he gives at his Comic Book Boot Camp.

Mike Zeck Spotlight (40:00, 36.6mb)
Moderated by Fred Kennedy, Mike Zeck explained what he has been doing over the last 20 years. He said he is doing licensing work for DC comics and he explains
what is involved in doing that type of work. Mike talked about how he broke in, at first doing work at Charlton, then meeting Stan Lee who recommended that Marvel hire him.
Zeck further gets into which Marvel editor finally hired him, what books he worked on and under what conditions. Kraven's Last Hunt was asked about and Mike talked about his
admiration for the story. He also told who's his favorite character is to draw. Zeck also explained why he preferred working in licencing vs drawing comic book stories. He
touched on some of his forgotten 90s work and Jerry Ordway's recent blog post
about Agism within the comics industry.

Sketch Duel: Mike McKone and Lee Weeks (50:34, 46.3mb)
Mike McKone and Lee Weeks decided to they wanted to draw the Hulk for the sketch duel but people in the audience gave out suggestions to what the Hulk would be doing.
While the sketching was going on they answered some questions for the audience, talked about other artists they loved, characters they wanted to work on, working with
writers and how much input they get on a story among other topics. There were tickets drawn for the sketches and two people won the sketches at the end. The panel was
moderated by Fred Kennedy.

Sketch Panel: Joe Jusko (53:03, 48.6mb)
This was supposed to be a sketch duel between Joe Jusko and Mark Texeira but Texeira did not show up for some reason. Joe had no problem doing the panel by himself, he took
the suggestion of drawing Vampirella for the audience. As he drew, he answered questions for the audience and occasionally stopped to show his progress with the drawing.
About 10 minutes into the panel Renee Witterstaetter (former Marvel editor and now agent) came in and began moderating the panel, taking questions from the audience and asking
questions of her own. Jusko about talked about being at the Joe Kubert school and winning a DC award of most promising new talent. He talked about how after school he immediately
decided to paint and learned how to do it via trial and error. Joe said he was an assistant to Howard Chaykin and explained how he helped him get started at Heavy Metal and Marvel
Comics. He also talked about how early in his career he was also a police officer. He gave advise on what artists should and shouldn't do when learning to draw.
He also talked about the Marvel Cards he's known for and why a new set hasn't been done yet. He talked about the market for painted work and what his favorite work is to date.

Irwin Hasen Spotlight (51:21, 47mb)
On the panel was Irwin Hasen, Al Jaffee, Arnold Roth and Paul Levitz. The panel was moderated by Danny Fingeroth. Al Jaffee and Arnold Roth told funnies stories about Irwin, Paul Levitz talked about
Irwin and Jack Kirby were two golden age artists who knew how to draw a fight and why. Irwin was funny and spoke a lot about his past and didn't pull any punches about his feelings for former publisher
MC Gaines who died in a boating accident. J. David Spurlock came on the stage briefly to tell stories about Irwin. Along the way Irwin's book The LoverBoy was plugged. Note: There is some adult language
spoken on the panel.

Brian Wood & Dark Horse (56:20, 51.5mb)
Interviewed by Dark Horse editor Jeremy Atkins, Brian Wood talks about his new series The Massive as well as his upcoming Star Wars work. He mentioned going to a recent Star Wars convention and how
the diverse fans and their easy going ways had a big impact on him. Brian answers questions from the audience and talks about his other work from Conan, DMZ, the Couriers and more.
He also answers questions on writing and other topics.

Grant Morrison Spotlight (53:21, 48.8mb)
Interviewed by Kim Alexander of SiriusXM, Grant talks about his new creator owned projects called Happy, Multiversity and Annihilator. He answers questions from the audience about superheroes, particularly Superman, Batman and
Jeff Lemire's run on Animal Man, movie scripts he's written, Jack Kirby and his ideas, also how he doesn't turn down work and juggles multiple projects at the same time.

Joe Simon Memorial (57:13, 52.3mb)
On the panel was Emily Groben (Joe Simons Grand Daughter), Jim Simon (Joe's son), Dave Gibbons, Paul Levitz, and Angelo Torres. The panel was moderated by Steve Saffel. Angelo talked about working with Joe on The Fly and the humor magazine Sick.
Paul Levitz talked about getting to read and having to write a column about Prez #1 that matched the hype DC editors were giving the book. Levitz later talked about how Joe Simon and Will Eisner were two creators from the Golden Age that had
business smarts. Dave Gibbons talked about being a fan of Joe's and being able to speak to him on the phone during last year's San Diego Comic Con. Emily, who looked after Joe during the last few years of his life talked about waking him up and
with the news of his collection of Crime stories made the New York Times best seller list. Jim Simon talked about working with Joe and how it could be difficult, but also spoke of how wonderful of a father Joe was. Steve Saffel spoke of how Simon
fought to get Kirby's name as a creator on the recent Captain America movie (something Marvel was against) and also negotiated to get Kirby's heirs some money on their shared work that is now being reprinted. Towards the end Mark Waid showed up and
apologized for not making it to the panel on time and talked about meeting Joe Simon.

The Image Comics Experience (57:33, 52.7mb)
A group of male image comic creators were on this panel to talk about their upcoming work and other books being announced. On the panel was Kieron Gillen, Andy Diggle, James Asmus, Jim Festante, Jim McCann and Jonathan Hickman. The panel was moderated by Eric Stephenson. After the announcements they went straight to the audience for questions. Among the things the panelists talked about were breaking into Image,
how to work through when parts of a story when it isn't working, they broke down how to make a full story into a comic book issue by issue. They also revealed what they read to generate new ideas and
what they are usually doing when ideas come to them.

Garth Ennis & Avatar (44:18, 40.5mb)
Moderated by Avatar owner William Christensen. Announced is an Crossed movie that will be made by Avatar themselves. Garth talked about coming back to write more Crossed and then
the answered questions from the audience. He talked a bit about doing more work for Avatar and Dynamite, talked about the Boys, why Preacher is unlikely to migrate to film,
his religious views, why he doesn't love superheroes and what he thinks of their dominance of the comics industry. He also talked about Alan Moore's work and how it kept him reading comics.

Hellboy in Hell with Mike Mignola (56:32, 51.7mb)
Panelists include Mike Mignola, Scott Allie, James Harren and Tyler Crook. Announcements were made about Mignola coming back to write and draw Hellboy comics. Then they answered questions from the audience, most of which were aimed at
Mignola. Among the topics were more Hellboy movies both live action and animated, the Comics crossing over with other characters, creating monsters, comic and non-comic influences, the benefits of having other artists draw Hellboy.
James and Tyler talked about getting to work on stories that followed up on stuff they enjoyed reading as fans. All of the artists talked about working digitally.

Image Comics - Female Creators (58:16, 53.3mb)
Moderated by Jennifer de Guzman. On the panel was Christine Larsen, Alex de Campi, Amy Reeder, Fiona Staples, Ming Doyle and Jordie Bellaire. They started off telling their origin stories on how they got into comics either
as a fan and/or as a professional. The group talked a lot about women body types and beauty in comics. They also answered questions from the audience about working with male collaborators, gave advise about writing female characters and all plugged works by other
female creators. Note: There is some adult language spoken on the panel.

How to Get News Coverage (53:51, 49.3mb)
Moderated by Rik Offenberger, a bunch of comic news sites writers talk about how to get coverage on their sites. One the panel was
Rich Johnston, Alan Kistler, Bryan Young, Dan Manser, Holly Golightly, Chris Thompson, J.C. Vaughn, Josh Waldrop, Heidi MacDonald and Glenn Hauman.
They taled about what e-mails they did and did not read, what information should be in the e-mail, things that people shouldn't do which will ensure you get ignored,
they also talked about smaller sites vs bigger sites when it comes to promoting a project.

Spotlight on Geof Darrow (100:30, 55.3mb)
Geof Darrow wins an Inkpot award and talks about how he got started in comics with Moebius, Frank Miller and the Wachowski Brothers.
He showed a partly worked on Shaolin Cowboy Anime that had no audio, but gave funny commentary as it played. He talked in detail about trying to get the anime created
and some road bumps he encountered along the way. Geof took the unusual step of asking the audience questions and giving them some signed prints for answering them.
The audience did ask him some questions and the Geof talked about good movies the audience should see towards the end.

Bleeding Alliance of Beat Reporters (47:51, 43.8mb)
On this panel was Andy Khouri, Rich Johnston, Heidi MacDonald and Tom Spurgeon. The panel was moderated by Douglas Wolk.
The group talked about making a living with their blogs, how they deal with commentators, how much they write vs editing their contributors, what type of stories
get under reported, why they got into comics journalism and they took questions from the audience.

ComicsPro: Retail Optimism (54:31, 49.9mb)
A cross section of retailers talked about reasons to be Optimistic in the current comic market. On the panel was Joe Field (Flying Colors Comics, Concord, CA),
Carr D'Angelo (Earth-2 Comics, Sherman Oaks, CA), Thomas Gaul (Corner Store Comics, Anaheim, CA), and Calum Johnston (Strange Adventures Bookshop, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada).
From the back Amanda Emmert (Muse Comics + Games, Colorado Springs, CO) asked questions. They revealed some very good news about how the market has rebounded in 2012 and also
trades stories with the audience of primarily retailers on cheap, easy promotions that created big sales. They talked about the demographics of readers now and how digital
comics market is affecting them, among other topics.

Spotlight on Larry Hama (51:52, 47.4mb)
Larry Hama got an inkpot award to start off the panel. He then began taking questions from the audience. He talked about how his service in Vietnam influenced GI Joe.
How old Japanese influenced the ninja aspect of GI Joe. How much long term planning he puts into his stories. Larry spoke about The Baroness and how she was a breakthrough for girl
action figures as Hasbro thought boys wouldn't buy those characters at first. He talked about the animated ads for the GI Joe comic books, said they were really a way around using
the animation limit to advertise the toys. Larry also talked a bit about his Wolverine run. editing the Nam (a very realistic Marvel book about the war) and how it won an award.

Comic Book Entrepreneurs (50:24, 46.1mb)
Moderated by Rob Salkowitz, on the panel were 4 Comic book Entrepreneurs in different areas of the industry. They were David Steinberger (ComiXology), Mike Richardson (Dark Horse Comics),
Peter Levin (Nerdist) and Joe Field (Flying Colors). They all talked about how they started their own businesses and gave tips for doing so to the audience. Other topics were the
hardest part of starting their business and fighting back against those that doubt your ability.

A Tribute to Richard Alf (49:20, 45.1mb)
Richard Alf was one of the co-founders of the San Diego Comic Con and was it's chairman in the early years. Moderated by Mike Towry, friends of Richard Ed Cormier, Earl Bookhammer,
David Clark, Bob Beerbohm, William Clausen, Paul Sammon, George Clayton Johnson, Greg Koudoulian, David McClone, Denis Smith, Clayton Moore, David Glanzer and Rob Ray from
San Diego University gather to talk about meeting Richard, what he was like, how he helped the convention and more.

comiXology Open Discussion: Everything Digital (48:16, 44.2mb)
comiXology co-founders David Steinberger and John D. Roberts give a short history of their 5 year old company and then answer questions from the floor.
They announced that Bongo and Abrams are now going to be selling their books digitally through their website. Among the questions they answered were about release times for
their new comic books and doing 3D Comics for 3D monitors.

Comics Arts Conference Session #10: Focus on Steve Englehart (49:09, 45mb)
Travis Langley moderated this Q&A with Steve Englehart. They talked about Engleharts formal education and getting into the comic business, working in the Marvel bullpen,
the reason he stopped writing the Avengers, his writing for DC Comics, bouncing in and out of the comic industry, his work on the Nightman TV show (a character he created for Malibu),
how he got Stan Lee's okay to do a God character in Dr. Strange (funny bit of deception), Marvel vs. DC competition, his views on academic reviews of his work among other topics.

CBLDF: The Fight To Defend Manga (49:20, 45.1mb)
Charles Brownstein gives a bit of history of comics and censorship and what the CBDLF does to fight it. He talks about specific issues with the problems of crossing the Canadian Boarder.
With him was Ryan Matheson who talked about his horrendous ordeal when the border authorities deemed an manga chibi parody on his laptop to be child porn and tried to get him to
confess to the "crime." Matheson talks about the various head games that were played on him while in custody and how eventually all charges were dropped when it was clear they didn't
have a case.

Will Eisner and the Graphic Novel (46:14, 42.3mb)
Klaus Janson, Denis Kitchen, Charles Kochman and Diana Schutz talk about Will Einser and his influence on the Graphic Novel. They talked about what underground comics influenced
Eisner, Klaus talked about he reacted to Eisner's Graphic Novels when they came out and how Einser influenced him and Frank Miller. The Denis and Diana talked about how it took some
time for the format to catch on and even talked a bit about the term itself. The panel was moderated by Charles Brownstein.

Spotlight on Gilbert Shelton (1:78:01, 70.5mb)
Moderator Gary Groth does an interview with Gilbert Shelton and talks about his career. He had a number of pieces of artwork and got Gary to talk about them throughout the
interview. Among the topics were origins of Wonder Worthog and Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, talked about working with Harvey Kurtzman and how he knew Janis Joplin, said he used to
do graphitti and had a potty character he would spray on billboards, and the how and why he ended up living in France. Shelton also answered questions from the audience.

Ted Naifeh and the 10th Anniversary of Courtney Crumrin (53:26, 48.9mb)
Ted Naifeh talks about what comics he loved as a kid (and still does with one particular character), how he got private art lessons as a kid, talked a bit about his parents and
where they worked, his artist influences. Ted spoke a lot about Courtney and designing her as well as the new colour editions of her books. The audience also asked questions about
various aspects of Courtney and her world, from particular characters reappearing and potential stories about Courtney as an adult. The panel was moderated by editor Jill Beaton.

Digital Comics Price Fight (51:35, 47.2mb)
Moderated by Chip Mosher, Mark Waid, Jeff Webber, Scott Kurtz, Chris Ross talk about how to price digital comics. Mark Waid was late getting to the panel which lead to Chip calling
his cell and leaving a voice message with the audience participation. The group talked about what price a digital comic should be and a bit about how much comics they should get for
that price. Scott Kurtz was not shy about talking about his issues with the way ComiXology business works, those on the panel asked the audience some question about pricing structures
for digital comics. DRM (digital rights management) was also an issue that was brought up too.

The Fine Line of Inking (50:47, 46.4mb)
On this panel we have a few inker/artists who talk about their work and inking. The panelists are Mark Schultz, Rudy Nebres, Gary Gianni and Andrew Farago was the moderator.
Klaus Janson was supposed to be on the panel but was not able to make it for some reason. The group talked about how they got into the industry and their influences. Part way
through Rudy was given an inkpot award. A large number of the audience were artists themselves who asked technical questions about inking which the panelists, particularly Rudy,
answered for them.

Super Secrets: Lifting the Curtain on the Man of Steel (55:28, 50.7mb)
Larry Tye, author of Superman (a new book about the history of the character) and Mark Waid talk about Jerry Siegel in particular, his father, the origins of the Superman.
Waid talks about finding the K-Metal story that Jerry wrote that introduces an early version of Kryptonite and has Superman revealing his secret identity to Lois Lane. Tye talks
about George Reeves suicide and the conspiracy theory around it. Waid also talks about the 100 page memoir that Jerry wrote and the lawsuit between the Siegel heirs and
Warner Brothers. Tye and Waid gave their opinions on what they think needs to happen for resolution to the case.

Full 2012 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards (2:19:47, 127mb)
The 2012 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards was held in the Indigo Room at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront.
The welcome was done by Jackie Estrada, Eisner Awards Administrator.
Among the presenters are Kayre and Bill Morrison, Tricia Helfer and Michael Trucco, Lynn Johnston and Alison Bechdel, Michael and Laura Allred, George R.R. Martin, Jonathan Ross,
RC Harvey, Erin Gray and Michael Uslan, Debbi Derriberri and Phil LaMarr. The Bill Finger Award was presented by Mark Evanier. The Spirit of Comics Retailer
Award was presented by Joe Ferrara. The Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award was presented by Ruth Clampett. Maggie Thompson did the Memoriam.
The Winners can be found at the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards page.

Focus on Web Comics with Ryan Sohmer & Lar DeSouza (49:20, 45.1mb)
They are best known for doing the Least I Could Do and
Looking for Group webcomics. This was a Q and A about them and webcomics in general. The two (mainly Ryan)
answered a bunch of question and told some stories about their experiences and also talked a bit about The Gutters
, another webcomic that Ryan writes and Lar occasionally contributes too. Specifically Ryan talked about Dan Didio (who's has been made fun of in the strip)
greeting him at a convention and his reaction to the strips. Other topics include newspaper syndication, Ryan's writing work in other mediums, and his love for Red Bull.

Exploring the Dark Corners of the DCU (56:00, 51.2mb)
Jeff Lemire, Yanick Paquette and Marco Rudy talk about their dark books of the new DCU. The panel is moderated by Tyler Jirik of the
The Dragon (Guelph, ON comic book store). Jeff goes into detail about Animal
Man and talks a bit about the upcoming Swamp thing crossover and his taking over of Justice League Dark. Yanick and Marco talk about Swamp Thing
and their artistic influences and the group altogether talked about working on non-superhero books. The audience also asked questions as well.

Mark Bagley Spotlight (49:28, 45.3mb)
Mark Bagley goes through his career in some depth in this panel moderated by Writer Jason Shayer. He talks about winning the Marvel Try-Out contest and meeting Jim Shooter, to working on
New Warriors, Spider-Man, Thunderbolts, Ultimate Spider-Man, a bit about his time at DC and coming back to Ultimate Spider-Man. Along the way he is very open in talking about who
helped his career and who tried to hurt it.

George Perez Spotlight (1:01:18, 56.1mb)
Writer Jason Shayer talks to George Perez about his career in comics running through the more popular runs including Teen Titans, Crisis, Wonder Woman, Avengers and JLA/Avengers. George
does talk about the first JLA/Avengers crossover from the 80s that didn't go through. Perez also talked about his love of drawing and how he thinks that's kept him popular over the
years. He also did not shy away from talking about his problems with editorial and writing committees and the havoc they have created in the new DCU.

Maggie Thompson Spotlight (48:46, 44.6mb)
Valerie Thompson interviews her mother about her early involvement with Sci-fi fandom and how that bridged into comic fandom. In particular she talks about starting up a
network of comic fans back in the 1960s and how that lead to the starting of some key fanzines such as The Comic Buyers Guide and eventually The Comic Reader.

The Black Panel - Dwayne McDuffie Tribute (1:19:39, 72.9mb)
Dwayne McDuffie was a very intelligent well loved writer, editor, producer of comic books and animation. He is best known for Milestone Media, Static Shock, Justice League Unlimited,
Ben 10, Damage Control, Deathlok and more. He died suddenly earlier this year and this panel comprised of his friends and colleagues to talk about Dwayne. On the panel were the
co-founders of Milestone Media Denys Cowan, Derrick Dingle and moderator Michael Davis. Also on was Peter David, Keith Knight, Reggie Hudlin, Phil LaMarr and Matt Wayne. They all
talked about Dwayne's intelligence, generosity and creativity. Towards the end they invited fans who's had experiences with Dwayne to speak about them and a few people who are now
professional writers spoke of how Dwayne took hours of his time to critique their work and how he helped them become the professional writers they are today.

The Golden Age of Fanzines (1:14:35, 68.2mb)
On this panel are the pioneers of comic fanzines and organized fandom. Panelists include Maggie Thompson, Richard and Pat Lupoff, Richard Kyle, Paul Levitz, Roy Thomas, Jean Bailes and
moderated by Bill Schelley. Each talk about how they started their fanzines started. A lot of the audience were fanzine publishers as well and they asked questions about other
fanzines (Rocket Blast Comic Collector in particular) and thanked the group for doing fanzines and welcoming them into their world.

That 70's Panel (45:24, 41.5mb)
Creators from the 70s gather to talk about their work at that time. Moderated by Mark Evanier, the panelist are Roy Thomas, Walter & Louise Simonson, Len Wein, Mike Royer and
Joe Staton. Mark asked about their first work in comics, how long they felt the comic industry was going to last (many assumed it would be dead in 5 years), what career they might
have pursued if the comic industry did collapse, their views on older artists that was still working, Warren Publishing (Jim Warren in particular), Star Wars, Manhunter and more.

ComicsPro: So You Want To Be A Comic Book Retailer? (1:21:24, 74.5mb)
Moderated by Joe Field, retailers Portyln Polston, Jennifer Haines, Chris Brady and Diamond outside Sales Manager Dave Hawksworth give a brief rundown of their experience and answer
questions from existing and aspiring retailers on starting up a comic store or improve a store. Among the topics covered are getting female readers, stocking back issues, digital
comics, percentage of sales on comics vs trades and other topics.

Is the Comic Book Doomed? (46:01, 42.1mb)
Douglas Wolk brings together a number of people in the industry to talk about the lifespan of the 32 page comic book. On the panel is Amanda Emmert (Retailer, ComicsPro), Laura Hudson
(Media, Comic Alliance), Vijaya Iyer (Co-Publisher, Cartoon Books) and Mark Waid (Long time writer & editor). Emmert and Waid go back and forth about the viability of the monthly
comic with Iyer discussing how Bone would be done if it were launched today. There is a bit of talk about why digital would replace the monthly as well.

CBLDF: 25 Years of Protecting Creativity (52:01, 47.6mb)
Charles Brownstein gives a history comic book censorship and the Comic Book Legal Defence Fund. He outlines the major cases the fund has been involved in over the years and their
results. Charles mentions that there is a worrying trend of censors targeting readers instead of retailers and publishers, but wrapping up their objections as child pornography to
tarnish the reputations of those who purchase the books of which they do not approve of.

Walter and Louise Simonson Spotlight (1:16:13, 69.7mb)
Scott Dunbier interviews Walter and Louise Simonson about their careers. Walter talks about drawing and eventually writing and in particular talk about the Alien adaptation Graphic Novel/Album
with Archie Goodwin published by Heavy Metal. Louise talks about her time as editor of Warren Publishing and Marvel. She also talks about Power Pack. At the end of the panel one lucky fan
wins an Artists Edition of Walt Simonson's Thor.

Jack Kirby Tribute (1:04:15, 58.8mb)
The annual Jack Kirby Tribute panel has Walter Simonson, Erik Larsen, Mike Royer, Richard Kyle and UK Celebrity Jonathan Ross. Moderated by Mark Evanier, the group talk about Jack
and his inkers. Among them was Vinnie Colletta, Mike Royer, Joe Sinnott and Steve Ditko. Jonathan talks about his love of Jack Kirby and his desire to do a documentary on him (talk
of his documentary on Steve Ditko popped up). They also talk about his DC work and the redrawing of Superman. Several people made announcements of upcoming Jack Kirby work coming out,
including a movie about the time Jack helped the CIA rescue American hostages in Iran.

The Philippine Invasion (41:16, 37.7mb)
Philippino artists Ernie Chan, Alex Nino, Tony DeZuniga and Gerry Alanguilan are interviewed by Mark Waid about their getting started at DC Comics. Nino talks about switching from
DC to Marvel in order to get the "real" page rate for artists at the time. He also talks about the freedom they at DC because his work was more suited to horror, which wasn't popular
in their local comic market. They discuss how the comic industry reacted to the Philippino artists when they started. Gerry talks about his working for DC today. They also talked about
Nestor Redondo and how he influenced all of them.

Richard and Pat Lupoff Spotlight (47:04, 43mb)
Moderated by Maggie Thompson, Richard and Pat Lupoff talk about their lives before getting in comic fandom. Pat reveals about how they met and became a couple. Richard (Dick) talks
about his life prior to fanzines, being an Army Lieutenant and working for IBM. He also talks about the productions of the fanzines. How he met Otto Binder and also a great story about
mystery writer Don Westlake gave him an essay to print in which he told off the science fiction editors that he had worked for previously. I should note that Donald Westlake is the
writer of the Richard Stark's Parker stories that Darywn Cooke is adapting for IDW.

David Boswell Spotlight (38:51, 35.5mb)
David Boswell talks about his career and a lot about his most famous creation Reid Fleming: The Worlds Toughest Milkman. Boswell explains how and why he got into doing comics,
some of the inspiration behind Reid Fleming, why what was originally supposed to be a one page joke became an ongoing comic. Boswell spoke about the making of the Graphic Novel
reprinting the Reid Fleming stories and what went into it. He goes into the new Reid Fleming Graphic Novel that's currently being created. He also talks about the proposed
Reid Fleming movie, the script he wrote and the big name actors that attempted to get it made and more. The panel was moderated by Tom Spurgeon

Telling True Stories (45:55, 42.0mb)
This panel includes a number of non-fiction writers spanning from autobiographical, history to biographies on other people. On it are David Collier, Tory Woolcott, Jim Ottaviani,
GB Tran and Zach Worton. The panel was moderated by Greg Means. The group talked about writing about people who are alive and would likely read the work vs. people who are dead and
gave reactions that they've received from family members to their subjects. They talked about how their behaviour changes when they are regularly doing autobiographic comics, also
how they depict themselves in their works. Just about everybody admitted to fictionalizing their work in some manner and went into the how and why of doing that. Researching their
topics was also discussed.

Usamaru Furuya Spotlight (1:03:41, 58.3mb)
Manga creator Usamaru Furuya is interviewed by Chris Butcher on this spotlight. Chris starts off by explaining how Furuya's work was translated to English
10 years ago and it was among the only book that dealt with the Japanese youth culture of the time. Through an interpreter, Furuya answers questions about why he
has changed his style from project to project, his breaking the 4th wall in earlier works and letting the readers know what is going on with him as he's drawing the
story, his work on a Japanese Earthquake and how it relates to the catastrophe that had recently occurred in Japan. He also answers questions from the audience about
his work and the Internet.

Q&A with Geoff Darrow and Bob McCleod (50:34, 46.3mb)
It was moderated by Comic Book Daily's Brent Chittenden.
The two talked about how they broke into comics, what they are doing now, the people they worked with in the past including Chris Claremont and John Byrne.
Geoff told some funny stories from his time working at the Hanna Barbara animation studio. There was talk about Jack Kirby, Moebius, working under
deadlines and more. The audience asked a number of questions. There was about 30 people in the audience for the panel. It was a hilarious panel that became
the buzz of the show afterwards.

Sketch Duel: Khoi Pham, Marcus To & Marcio Takara (40:13, 36.8mb)
This was advertised as Khoi Pham and Marcus To, but Marcio Takara was a surprise 3rd addition to the panel. They took suggestions from the crowd and Marcio
chose Deadpool for the 3 of them to draw. While drawing there was some Q&A going on with the artists, among the topics were how they broke in, formal art
education, previous jobs, inspirations, working in a studio vs. by themselves, dream jobs and other topics. There was 50 people in attendance and at the end
3 winners from the crowd got the Deadpool sketches. Click these links to see
Khoi Pham,
Marcus To &
Marcio Takara
sketches and the fans that won them.

Drawing Ahead: The Future of Comics (51:36, 47.2mb)
Moderated by Kill Shakespeare co-writers Conor McCreery and Anthony Del Col, Creators Andy Belanger, Ramon Perez, Cameron Stewart, Willow Dawson and Scott Chantler
talk about the Future of Comics. More specifically they talk about print comics, digital comics and piracy, the European market, the Direct Market, Digital Markets and
middle men, also traditional Comics and Bookstore oriented publishers and they way they market and sell their books.

Marvel: Pint of C. B. (1:01:38, 56.4mb)
Pint of C. B. is Marvel's Senior Vice President, Creator and Content Development C. B. Cebulski filling in for Joe Quesada to answer questions for fans. With him is
Spider-Man editor Steve Wacker and Manager of Sales and Communication Arune Singh to help answer questions. They make some announcements, particularly concerning Alpha
Flight and other books and open up the floor for questions.

Yoshitaka Amano Spotlight (46:01, 42.1mb)
Yoshitaka Amano is an artist/designer who worked on classic anime such as Speed Racer and Gatchaman, influenced by Western Comics (Neal Adam's Batman among them) he would design
characters for anime, movies and video games. He is best known for his work on the Vampire Hunter D franchise. In the US he was the artist for Neil Gaiman's Sandman: The
Dream Hunters and Elektra & Wolverine: The Redeemer (written by Greg Rucka). Through a translator he answers questions about his Manga, Game Design, and working on
US Comics. Fan also ask him for his opinions on beauty and how to cosplay his characters.

Hitoshi Ariga Spotlight (45:51, 41.9mb)
Udon's Managing Editor Matt Moylan interviews creator Hitoshi Ariga through Michelle Hayashi, translator and Japanese Liaison. Hitoshi Ariga works on the Mega Man franchise
and is the creator of the Mega Man MegaMix manga series. They talk about all things Mega Man, characters, how he draws gutters for the manga, who would win in a fight
between Mega Man and Astro Boy, favorites & least favorite characters and more.

Comic Arts Conference: New Fun About Siegel and Shuster (1:20:09, 73.3mb)
Moderated by Comic Book writer and Men of Tomorrow Author Gerard Jones, this panel brings together a number of people with new info to reveal about Siegel and Shuster from a
variety of different angles. Panelist were Lauren Agostino (Lawyer), Brad Ricca (Author), Mary Wheeler-Nicholson/Brown (Granddaughter of DC founder Major Malcolm
Wheeler-Nicholson) and Mel Gordon (Author).
Brad Ricca has gone though the early work of Siegel and Shuster and found a lot of characters that they pulled from real life, from their school teachers, popular
movie stars at the time, to specific buildings. He is compiling a book about all of this and had a little slide show with Shuster's art and photo's of the people and
places to compare too.
Lauren Agostino was told to throw some old court documents away by an old, long retired ex-lawyer. She found out some of those documents were from the 1947
lawsuit between Siegel and Shuster and DC comics.
Nicky Brown talked about dispelling some myths about her grandfather based on her research into his history and presents evidence that Wheeler-Nicholson gave a
very specific and detailed outline on the Slam Bradley character. Her research is ongoing and is looking into what other characters Wheeler-Nicholson might have given
a detailed outlines on.
Mel Gordon has written a book about Funny Man, a character created by Siegel and Shuster after Superman. Along the way he talked about Jewish humor and brings up details
about Zisha Breitardt, a Polish-Jew strong man that often labeled himself Superman and did lots of true and faked amazing feats to show off his strength. It was also
mentioned that he toured in both Toronto and Cleveland around the time the two were growing up. He appears to be a strong likely influence on the creation of Superman.

Spotlight on Jenette Kahn (48:55, 44.7mb)
Jenette Kahn was Publisher, later President and Editor in Chief of DC Comics between 1976 and 2002. She is interviewed by former DC President and Publisher
Paul Levitz. They go over her time at DC comics and how she was greeted at first and some of the major projects she had a direct hand in. Specifically they talk
about a comic about land mines that was handed out to Children in areas with land mines were still hidden. One of those asking questions was overseas handing those
books out and spoke to how effective they were in drawing kids attention, getting them to read and take serious the threat of land mines. There is a lighting
round of names and her reactions to them. They also talked about her being a producer of the Clint Eastwood Gran Torino movie. Kahn talks about what was all
involved in getting it made and the list of big name actors that turned down the movie. This panel started late due to the previous panel going over it's time.

Spotlight on Robert Kirkman (43:50, 40.1mb)
Sina Grace moderates a spotlight on Robert Kirkman. They talk about Skybound, the new imprint under Image that Kirkman is heading up. They promote the first book
coming out called Witch Doctor and bring up it's creators Brandon Seifert and Lukas Ketner to talk about it. There is a long Q & A with fans where Kirkman goes into
Kevin Smith mode answering questions and having snappy conversations with his fans. Anybody that asked questions were also given a free Witch Doctor promo comic. A lot of
the questions focus on the upcoming Walking Dead TV show.

Spotlight on Moto Hagio (55:05, 50.4mb)
Moto Hagio was presented with an Inkpot Award. Matt Thorn moderated the panel and did the translating for Moto. They went over her career, highlighting some popular
and not so popular works. She was very funny about her work, telling jokes about how she treats her characters and why she did certain series. As they went through
the work she would point out which stories are in the new collection of her works from Fantagraphics called A Drunken Dream and Other Stories. She explained which US Sci-Fi authors she read and influenced
her. Some of the audience did not need any translating as they were laughing at her jokes before the translation was done. When the Q&A period was going on, some of
them spoke to her in Japanese as well, but gave an English translation for the audience too.

Spotlight on Stuart and Kathryn Immonen (48:11, 44.1mb)
This panel was moderated by John Siuntres of WordBalloon.com. It starts off with Stuart being asked about his
earliest work and then receiving an Inkpot Award. From there it goes through both Stuart and Kathryn's career in comics, when they worked together and apart. They talk
about their most recent work together, Moving Pictures from Top Shelf. They go into what their next book together will be and answer questions from fans, particularly
about their superhero work. Kathryn talks about Hellcat and her upcoming work, Stuart talks about Nextwave.

Comics Pro: So You Want To Become A Comic Book Retailer? (1:23:25, 76.3mb)Comics Pro is an organization dedicated to helping other brick and mortar Direct Market retailers. Moderator
and Comics Pro President Joe Field believes the Direct Market can support another 1,000 comic book shops and uses this panel to reach out and help people wanting to
open their own stores. On the panel is Diamond Comics Dave Hawksworth, Retailers Thomas Gaul, Derrick Taylor, David Wheeler and Michael Ring. They present a range of
newer and established stores who've found success and are willing to share their knowledge. The group gave their comic retailing origin stories and talked about what
makes their stores unique. All retailers talked about the importance of creating a sense of community within the store. There was also a lively Q&A with the audience
with a lot of questions. Among the topics covered was the Online Market (Amazon, etc..), Kids Market, Buying a store vs. Opening a new one, Doing a Manga style cafe
and more.

Spotlight on Peter Bagge (50:04, 45.8mb)
Jason T. Miles moderated this panel. Peter Bagge receives an Inkpot Award at the beginning. The two talk about Bagge editing Weirdo and the differences between them and
RAW which was running at the same time. Bagge also explained further about how art spiegelman (then RAW editor) tried to get the fine art world to take comics
seriously. Bagge explains why he doesn't like what was called fine art at the time and prefers low brow humor.
He also talked about his time at School of Visual Arts and why he dropped out. In terms of new work, he is still
working for Reason Magazine and is doing stories about women writers during the 1920s. What is appealing to him is
how they ignored societies rules and did what they wanted. He's hoping to have them collected in a book when he is done. The first one is now online.

Comics Criticism Panel (50:10, 45.9mb)
The panelists were R. C. Harvey, Gary Groth, Brian Doherty, Douglas Wolk, R. Fiore and Gerard Jones. Ben Schwartz did the Moderating. They talked about if comics criticism is now in a
Golden Age or not. They went into “outsiders” getting involved with comics and comics criticism and the pro's and cons of that. R. Fiore spoke a lot about his
disappointment in the intelligence of modern society, likening it to Flowers for Algernon when Charlie goes back to being mentally disabled. At the end they spoke
about the influence Harvey Pekar had on comics.

Comics Reprints Panel (49:20, 45.1mb)
Panel moderated by Andrew Farago of the Cartoon Art Museum. Panelists were Craig Yoe!, Dean Mullaney, Daniel Herman, Peggy Burns, Gary Groth (who arrives about 5 minutes in), Steve Saffel
and Charles Pelto. The group talked about the cyclical nature of comic reprints. Yoe! brought up the earliest newsstand comics were reprints of comic strips, then comic strips
were reprinted again the 60s and 70s in paperback books. Peggy Burns talked about making books for readers vs. collectors. She mentioned how collectors give
them negative feedback because they choose to exclude certain things from their books. There was also talk of how the later volumes don't sell as
well as the first one, but that they all see it through to the end because they love the material and made the commitment to it. They went into their stories
involving having to put out an S.O.S. to fans for missing art and weird stories of finding it. This went into a stories about dealing with families and how they can
help and hurt reprinting old comic strips. On the panel Gary Groth announced that they worked out the rights with Disney about publishing the complete Floyd Gottfredson Mickey Mouse.

Bill Everett Panel (50:03, 45.8mb)
Author of Fire and Ice: Bill Everett, Blake Bell interviews Bill's daughter Wendy Everett. Blake showed some early work of Bill's showing how good he was,
and actually much better than most if not all golden age comic artists working during that time period. Wendy spoke about what Bill was like as a father. She goes into detail about how
hugely creative he was and gives examples of things he was did for them (her and her two brothers). Wendy said her father taught her to letter comics and involved her brothers in comics
in different ways. Wendy reveled what the inspiration for Daredevil was and what colour they wanted the costume to be (it wasn't yellow). They also talked about
Everett's alcoholism and how it started and that he eventually joined AA. Blake mentioned a couple of comic creators that Everett helped out with their drinking
problems as well. Blake revealed that after Everett died the ACBA (Academy of Comic Book Artists) created a Bill Everett foundation and that it has been rolled into
HERO Initiative. Blake said 10% of the book proceed will also be going to HERO as well.

Fan vs. Pro Comic Trivia contest (1:16:25, 69.9mb)
Panel was moderated by Peter David wearing a Galactus hat. Fans were Michael Grabois, David Oakes and Tom Galloway. On the Pro's side it was Len Wein, Kurt Busiek and was supposed to
be Mark Waid. Mark was unable to make it to the panel, taking his place was Peter Svensson who took his spot 2 years ago. He altered Mark Waid's name tag adding a “Pal”
(ala Jimmy Olson) and his name underneath. There was some delay as people were waiting for Mark. Kurt offers his Hershey Kisses to people in the crowd that could
answer one of his trivia questions. Kurt also brought a kazoo with him and occasionally played it. The theme this year was Pre-Crisis DC in recognition to thier 75th Anniversary.
The questions were unbelievably hard and there were many that nobody on either side got. Everybody agreed that Mark Waid would have been answer some of them though.
Still people on the panel wanted to strangle the guy that wrote the questions. Peter David was extremely funny on stage and got the audience involved by having sides say “ooohh” and “aahh” at times and
giving which question number they were asking. The “series” between the two was tied 6-6 prior to the start of event.
Details on the previous contests can be found here.

Full 2010 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards (2:56:28, 161mb)
The 2010 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards was held in the Indigo Room at the Hilton San Diego Bayfront.
Introduction by Masters of Ceremonies Bill Morrison and Maurice LaMarche. Assisted by Kayre Morrison.
The welcome was done by Jackie Estrada, Eisner Awards Administrator.
Denis Kitchen made an announcement of Contract with God being made into a movie.
Presenters included James Robinson, Thomas Jane, Phil LaMarr, Robert Ben Garant & Thomas Lennon, Milo Manara and Chris Claremont, Peter Bagge, Dave Gibbons, James Sturm and Jillian
Tamaki, C. Tyler, Laurie Sandell, Berkeley Breathed also the entire cast of Scott Pilgrim was on stage and a few of them took turns presenting awards. The Russ Manning Most Promising Newcomer Award was
presented by Eric Shanower, The Bill Finger Award was presented by Mark Evanier and Jerry Robinson, The Spirit of Comics Retailer Award was presented by Joe Ferrara,
The Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award was presented by Ruth Clampett. Sergio Aragones presented the Hall of Fame and Maggie Thompson did the Memoriam.The Winners can be found at the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards page.

Greg Rucka - A Novel Approach. (50:12, 45.9mb)
Greg Rucka answers questions about how he got into comics, writing books, working with various artists and other writers. He also tells a story about being an EMT
and how he helped a woman that got stabbed in the throat in New York City. Rucka talks about his changed views on the movie industry after his experiences on
the set of Whiteout. Greg also tells us about his upcoming creator owned work as well.

Shop Talk with Philip Tan, Barry Kitson and Francis Manapul. (57:29, 52.6mb)
These 3 artists talk about their art education, the process they use when working with different writers. More specifically Kitson talks about working with Mark Waid,
Manapul talks about Geoff Johns and Jim Shooter, and Philip Tan talks about working at Marvel and with Dan DiDio. Kitson talks about Negative Space and leading the
readers eye around the page and Manapul joins in. They also talked about the benefits and pitfalls of using Agents among other topics.

Jeff Lemire - Bruisers, Brawlers and Invisible Men. (47:35 43.5mb)
Jeff Lemire explains how he went from being an celebrated indy cartoonist to a monthly superhero writer for DC. He talks about his earliest work and winning the
Xeric Grant and how that helped him. Jeff gives insight to the real and not real parts of Essex County trilogy and how the 3 book series came together. He mentions
how things are going for him in Vertigo and also his now creating a new origin for The Atom and writing Superboy.

Comics and Social Media (52:45, 48.3mb)
Moderated by Robin McConnell, Jeff Rowland, Kate Beaton, Rich Stevens, Ray Fawkes and James Sturm talk about social media,
or more generally the internet affects their work. James Sturm talks about his recent decision to cut himself off the Internet for 4 months.
Other topics was about dealing with the audience feedback and their own personal privacy, also about when they felt they became legitimate.

Webcomics and Serial Story telling (53:47, 49.2mb)
Ananth Panagariya, Merridith Gran, Spike, Tara Tallan, Cameron Stewart and Ramon Perez talk about doing long form webcomics. The panel is moderated by Holly Post.
Without naming it they talk about Jonathan Rosenberg recent blog post about possibly shutting down his long running Goats webcomic and feelings of legitimacy. Other
topics include how much of their story they have planned out, how their audience comments changes their stories, having their characters grow, introducing new
characters & getting and keeping new readers.

Re-making History: Curating and Packaging Reprints (52:14, 47.8mb)
Dan Nadel, Evan Dorkin, Jeet Heer and Seth talk about the resurgence of comic strips and other old comics. They talk about how the designs of the reprints affects
changes how people view the work. Other topics are good and bad design, without naming some people who were doing the bad designs, the ethics of redesigning other
peoples work, a bit about Jack Kirby and Siegel & Shuster legal situations.

Burn It! Surviving Graphic Novel Challenges (50:11, 45.9mb)
Deborah Caldwell-Stone from the American Library Association talks about censors that try to get Graphic Novels pulled from Libraries. She talks about specific cases
and has with her David Powell who was involved in a famous case of two library staff that was restricting access to The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier.

Dark Horse Heroes (56:40, 51.8mb)
Dark Horse is bringing back the Gold Key heroes Turok, Dr. Solar and Magnus the Robot Fighter with Jim Shooter at the helm. This panel has Jim Shooter along with Dark Horse Editor
Chris Warner, artists Dennis Calero and Bill Reinhold talk about the books. Dark Horse Publisher Mike Richardson is in the audience and answers a couple of questions too.

Mr. Silver Age trivia Challenge, Mark Waid vs. 5 Fans (54:06, 49.5mb)
Hosted by Mr. Silver Age (aka "Craig Shutt"), Mark Waid takes on 5 knowledgeable fans in Silver Age trivia. Do you know which JLA member disguised themselves as Wonder Woman
before taking on a villain? Spider-Man's first full feature story? The creators of The Parasite? These questions and a ton more are asked and answered.

Bill Willingham Spotlight (1:05:04, 59.5mb)
Comic Writer Bill Willingham gets the spotlight with his friend Steven Sullivan and Fans taking turns asking the questions. There are spoilers and secrets revealed about what
is coming up in the Fables Universe his other work.

Indie Is In (36:43, 33.6mb)
Mark Waid moderates a panel with Jeff Smith, creator of Bone. They two talk about Dave Sim, somebody trying remove Bone from a Library because they found it offensive and
creating comics in general, and how he got retailers to take notice of Bone. Towards the end Jeff Smith has to leave early to catch his flight (at the urging of the audience).
Mark Waid answers questions for the remaining 5 minutes of the panel. I was a little late to the start of this panel but they hadn't offically started it yet as they
were expecting more people to show up.

Max Brooks Panel (56:49, 52mb)
Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z author talks humourously about why he wrote his books, gives many real world details behind the World War Z stories. He also talks about the World War Z comic book, tells us about himself and answers questions from the audeince.
Note: Max Brooks swears.

Webcomics! (50:02, 45.8mb)
Hosted by Chris Butcher, the panel consisted of 5 webcomic creators. They were Ryan North
(Dinosaur Comics), Andy Belanger
(Transmission X), Kean Soo
(Jellaby),
Faith Erin Hicks (Ice and War at Ellsmare)
and Emily Horne (A Softer World).
They talked about a variety of webcomics issues, how and why they started, what day has the lowest web
traffic, supporting themselves with a web comic, getting into print, etc.. Due to a dead battery lost
about the last 5 minutes of the panel.

Spotlight on J. Michael Straczynski (73:39, 67.4mb)
JMS answers questions from the crowd about his work and tells some very funny stories about his path to becoming an established writer.
Highlights include his encounters with his hero Rod Sterling and his faking his graduation from school to please his parents.

Spotlight on Darwyn Cooke (56:21, 51.6mb)
Cartoonist Darwyn Cooke speaks about his Parker: The Hunter Graphic Novel adaptation. He also talks about behind the scenes
stories about how a Spirit animated movie almost came to pass, the New Frontier animated movie and future work. Darwyn is
very open and candid in this spotlight. The Panel was moderated by Robert Haines. I should note I was a few minutes late for the
beginning of the panel.

Writing Comics with Len Wein (51:08, 46.8mb)
Industry Veteran Len Wein does a panel about writing comics and writing in general. He starts off with a
small talk about the subject then asks the audience for questions. Much of the audience was interested in
becoming writers and asked pretty on topic questions.

Mondo Marvel (52:30, 48mb)
Joe Quesada, Arune Singh, Kathryn Immonen (writer), Tom Brennan (Spider-man Assistant Editor) and CB Cebulski.
Off to the side was Mike Pasciullo. They start off promoting some of upcoming books then go into taking
questions from the audience. A couple of audience members vent their frustration over One More Day storyline
and the recent Marvel Diva's book. The rest of them asked questions about everything Marvel. There was also
some good natured ribbing regarding DC doing Wednesday Comics vs their online comics.

Secret Origins of Comic-Con. (61.8mb, 67:32)
Participants of the first and early San Diego Comic cons tell their stories of how it all began.
Panelist include Richard Alf, Greg Bear, Dave Clark, Ken Krueger, Mike Towry, Scott Shaw!, Barry Alfonso, Roger Freedman, Ken Krueger,
and moderated by William R. Lund. This panel gets cut off before it ends due to a dead battery.

Indie Comics Marketing 101. (41.7mb, 45:33)
How to market your comics if you are not a big publisher. Boom! Marketing director Chip Mosher, The Beat's Heidi MacDonald and filling in for
Shanon Wheeler is popular blogger and creator Kevin Church. Chip goes through the mind set and some rules on marketing yourself, Heidi and Kevin goes through
some do's and don'ts on the press end. The panel is moderated by the former manager of development and content at MySpace, Sam Humphries.

Spotlight on Jerry Robinson. (41.8mb, 45:43)
Moderator Mark Waid interviews Jerry Robinson about his career in comics, particularly focusing on his early Batman days and his
latest work as a guest curator for an exhibition on Superhero comic art.

Golden and Silver Age of Comics. (69.1mb, 75:31)
Panelists include Murphy Anderson, Gene Colan, Ramona Fradon, Russ Heath, Jack Katz, Jerry Robinson and Leonard Starr. The group tells stories about
their time in comics. The panel is moderated by Mark Evanier.

Spotlight on Dwayne McDuffie. (45.8mb, 50:02)
Dwayne McDuffie receives an inkpot award and just does a straight Q&A with the audience. He answers questions about writing comics and animation.
In particular about Fantastic Four, Damage Control, Static Shock and the Milestone Universe, Justice League, Teen Titans and Ben 10.

The Black Panel. (74.1mb, 81:00)
Moderated by Michael Davis. This laugh out loud funny panel's participants include Ludacris, Michael Jai White, Stacey McClain,
Kel Mitchell, Prdodical Sunn, Jimmy Diggs, Reggie Hudlin, Denys Cowan, a surprise guest Michelle Nichols. There was
also a performance by a singer Asia Lee, Queen of Cali. Artist Ken Lashley was in the crowd and stood up to participate towards the end.
There was much promoting of upcoming projects and some Q&A from the audience.

Spotlight on Sheldon Moldoff. (42.4mb, 46:22)
Mark Waid interviews Sheldon Moldoff about his career, in particular about his time working on Batman. Moldoff also talks about the
time he sued DC and won (but still continued to work for them) and his very bad experience with Bill Gaines. I should note I missed about the
first 5 minutes of the panel.

Spotlight on Denis Kitchen. (94.5mb, 54:04)
Michael Dooley gave a very long introduction to Denis Kitchen and also ran a quick moving power point showing lots of
Kitchen's underground art. They talked a bit about his career, what he's doing now and took questions from the audience.

Comic-Con: El Cortez Memories. (45.6mb, 49:51)
Moderated by David Scroggy, this panel includes many early comic con goers and they tell funny stories about the old
El Cortez hotel the comic con used to be held in. On the panel was Sergio Aragonés, Mike Friedrich, George Clayton Johnston,
Jack Katz, Lee Marrs, Mike Royer, William Stout and Mark Evanier.

Harvey Kurtzman Tribute. (46.9mb, 51:14)
Panelists include Paul Levitz, Denis Kitchen, William Stout, Charles Kochman and Harvey's daughter Nellie Kurtzman. Panel is
moderated by Mark Evanier. The group talk about Harvey, his strengths and his career path in an open and honest way.

The Annual Jack Kirby Tribute Panel. (51.9mb, 56:42)
Mark Evanier is the moderator. On the panel is Bill Mumy, Mike Royer, Steve Saffel, Paul S Levine and the inspiration
for the 5 String Mob from Jimmy Olsen comics, Barry Alfonso, Roger Freedman, William R. Lund, Scott Shaw! and Mike Towry. The panel talks
about Jack, point out that several of the audience members also have Jack Kirby connections as well.

Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards 2009. (154mb, 169:17)
Categories are in order of appearance:
Best Publication for Kids, Best Publication for Teens/Tweens
Best Coloring
Best Lettering
Best Digital/Web Comic
The Bill Finger Excellence in Comics Writing Awards
Best Penciller/Inker or Penciller/Inker Team
Best Painter/Multimedia Artist
Best Cover Artist
Best Comics-Related Periodical/Journalism
Best Comics-Related Book
Best Publication Design
Best Archival Collection/Project-Strips
Best Archival Collection/Project-Comic Books
Best Humor Publication
Best U.S. Edition of International Material
Best U.S. Edition of International Material—Japan
The Russ Manning Most Promising Newcomer Award
Hall of Fame
In Memoriam
Best Writer
Best Writer/Artist
Best New Series
Best Limited Series
Best Continuing Series
The Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award
Best Short Story
Best Anthology
Best Reality-Based Work
Best Graphic Album-Reprint
Best Graphic Album-New
The awards were hosted by Bill Morrison. Neil Gaiman gave the keynote speech. Among the presenters were:
Patton Oswald, Robert Garant & Thomas Lennon, Blair Butler, Jeff Smith & Terry Moore, Jason Lutes & Seth, and Matt Wagner & Amy Reeder Hadley.
There was much humor to be had, poking fun at previous award shows and other creators. Winners are listed here.

The Secret History of Manga in North America! (46mb, 50:20)
Jason Thompson a long time editor, writer, historian of various Manga related books takes us through Manga's journey in the North American market.
He goes through the magazines, comic books, publishers, people and events that have shaped the industry. The panel is both educational and funny as
Jason tells some behind the scenes anecdotes that have happened over the years.

Scott McCloud Panel. (69.4mb, 75:51)
Scott McCloud talks about comics, comics, comics and does so very enthusiastically. The panel is hosted by Mark Askwith.
The audience also asks questions as well. Note: Scott occasionally uses foul language, but very politely.

Craig Yoe and Secret Identity: the Fetish Drawings of Superman's Co-Creator Joe Shuster. (35.7mb, 39:03)
Craig Yoe talks about his new controversial book about a previously unknown period in Joe Shusters life where he began drawing dirty comics.
The characters bare a very close resemblance to Superman, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen and others. Yoe also talks about Frederic Wertham's involvement
in the situation and reveals some information regarding correspondence between himself and Shuster's sister. The panel is hosted by Douglas Wolk.

Full 2009 Doug Wright Awards. (116mb, 127:38)
The awards were hosted by Actor, Writer and Director Don McKellar.
Among the presenters are Stuart McLean, Andrew Coyne, Jeet Heer, Adrian Tomine and a video from Bob Rae.
The ceremony was as follows:
A Burlington City Councilor announces the new Doug Wright Drive.
Pigskin Peters Hat/Award: Matt Forsythe for Ojingogo.
Best Emerging Talent: Kate Beaton for History Comics.
A talk between Brad Mackay, Seth and Chris Oliveros about the new Doug Wright Collection.
A surprise award to Chris Oliveros for 20 year anniversary of Drawn and Quarterly.
A surprise gift from the Doug Wright Family to Seth, Brad Mackay and Chris Oliveros for their work on the Doug Wright Collection.
Giants of the North, Canadian Cartoonist Hall of Fame inductee Jimmy Frise.
Best Book: Jillian & Mariko Tamaki for Skim.

How Not to Break Into Comics. (50.5mb, 55:13)
Randal C Jarrell (Oni) and Jennifer de Guzman (SLG). The two talked about a bunch of mistakes that the vast majority of beginners make when trying to break into comics.
It was quite humorous as they spent about a half hour going down a laundry list of stuff aspiring pro's have done to them. Then they took questions from the audience.

The Future of the Comic Pamphlet. (40.8mb, 44:39)
On this panel was retailer Carr D'Angelo, Image Comics Joe Keatinge, Age of Bronze creator Eric Shanower and it was moderated by author Douglas Wolk. I missed the first 5 minutes rushing between panels but when I came in Eric Shanower was talking about Age of Bronze in comic book vs. Graphic Novel format.
Eric admitted the comics don't make him much money and wonders if he should still be doing them. He says he ends up using the left over comics as giveaways and even brought a Diamond box full of various Age of Bronze issues to give away to the audience.
Joe Keatinge took exception to the calling a comic a pamphlets and brought some normal 3 way folded pamphlet leaflets to show everybody saying "THIS is a pamphlet!" Towards the end the panelist and audience talked about how to grow comic book sales, with everybody recognizing distribution is a major issue that couldn't be easily or quickly fixed.

Golden Age/Silver Age of Comics Panel. (73.4mb, 80:16)
This was moderated by Mark Evanier and it's panelists were Russ Heath, Al Jaffee, Larry Lieber, Jerry Robinson and Al Feldstein.
Mark Evanier asks the panel to tell funny stories about other creators they've worked with, as well as talking about
particular stories they were proud of. Jerry Robinson and Larry Lieber did some back and forth joking about the
respective Iron Man and Batman movies. Larry Lieber tells a funny story about him attending Premier of the
Iron Man movie.

That's 70's (Comics) Panel. (66.7mb, 72:56)
This was also moderated by Mark Evanier. Panelist were Jim Starlin, Joe Staton, Mike Grell, Mike W. Barr, Bernie Wrightson and eventually Len Wein.
The group told stories about who their mentors were in the comic industry, works they did they were especially proud of and other topics.
There was also some funny stories about how they used colour to get around the Comics Code.

Jim Warren spotlight. (50.8mb, 55:33)
For those that don't know, Jim Warren was a publisher that put out Famous Monsters of Filmland, Creepy,
Eerie, Vampirella and many other titles. He got a huge applause when he showed up which really moved
him. On the panel with him was Verne Langdon and it was partially moderated by Phil Kim. Jim said at
the beginning that he usually hated panels like this as they were boring a lot of the stuff said on
them was not true. Jim spent much of his time standing while speaking. He is hard of hearing now and
was just given magazine names to discuss, which he did. Eventually he took questions from the audience.
He was very blunt on his dislike of Creepy's first editor Russ Jones.

Colleen Doran's Resources for Creators Panel. (39.9mb, 43:36)
Colleen was a bit late getting the this panel. She had a bunch of info to give out to help freelancers,
particularly with the issue of legal assistance, health care, copyright and trademarks. She also brought
up her experiences with a bad publisher and discussed the proposed Orphan Works bill.

The Black Panel. (82mb, 89:36)
The panel was moderated by Michael Davis. On the panel was Method Man, Faith Cheltenham, Rusty Cundieff, John Dokes, Denys Cowan
and Reggie Hudlin. There was plenty of people asking about support issues within the black community.
From the audience Jamal Igle joined when one person asked if the more conservative looking black creators were the ones getting work or not.
This was a hilarious panel with several laugh out loud moments.

The World of Steve Ditko. (49.1mb, 53:41)
The panel was moderated by Blake Bell, the author of Strange and Stranger The World of Steve Ditko.
This panel was different because it had a wide cross section of panelists. There was underground
cartoonist Kim Dietch, Fantagraphics Publisher Gary Groth, creator Jim Starlin, former Marvel editor
Carl Potts, and TV host Liana K. They looked at and talked about Blake Bells Top 10 pieces of Ditko art,
which spread throughout his early and mid career. There was a lot of talk about what Ditko did well and
set him apart from other artists, there was a bit of talk about how his views changed his work. There
was also a bit of contention between an audience member and Liana K over Ditko's philosophical views.
The panel was educational in terms of describing what Ditko brought to comic art and eventually lost.

Fan vs Pro Trivia Panel. (60.4mb, 66:00)
Peter David moderated and was hilarious. Mark Waid had to leave early and Kurt Busiek wasn't at the show so two audience
members took up the Pro side. The name pro's were Len Wein and Robert N. Skir from the animated X-men TV show.
Several people called for Peter David to join the pro side but as moderator he had already read all the
questions and answers. One of the audience members (Peter Svenson) was really knowledgeable and actually
answered most of the questions for the pro side. The other (Jason Luna) made some groan inducing guesses
to some questions. Peter was called early in the show to discovered his flight was canceled and he'd have
to spend an extra night in San Diego. He joked the winner of the show gets to put him up for the night.
Overall the questions were quite heavy on DC related stuff.

The Eisner Awards Ceremony. (163mb, 178:06)
The awards were hosted by Bill Morrison. Frank Miller gave the keynote speech. Among the surprise celebrity presenters were
Samuel L. Jackson, Jane Weidlin, Gerard Way (who won an award) and the star of The Spirit Gabriel Macht. Awards were given out to a variety of
comic industry professionals, most of which were on hand to accept the awards.

Web Comics, The Future of the Medium? (62.8mb, 68:37)
The creators were Scott Hepburn, Andy Belanger, Karl Kersch, Cameron Stewart, Dan "Jamie" Simon,
Jeff Moss, Brian McLaughlin, Tyrone McCarthy, Ramon Perez and Danielle Corsetto. The panel talked about
a wide range of general webcomics issues, not really about the panel topic. Most of it was Q&A among
fans and talk amongst the creators. A lot of it was pretty funny.

Mark Waid Telephone Interview 2008 (July 9th)

Mark Waid Telephone Interview (18.6mb, 20:23)
Mark Waid is a long time comic book veteran who has taken the Boom EIC position almost a year ago. He's also one of the new Amazing
Spider-Man writers. In this telephone interview we talk about his working for Boom, the mini-series he did for them called Potter's
Field, his upcoming work on Amazing Spider-Man and in his involvement with the lawsuits against the very stupid deadbeat Rick Olney.

Comics & Kids: Teaching with Sequential Art (49.8mb, 54:28)
On the panel was Teacher/Comic Book Retailer Jenn Stewart (The Dragon in Guelph, ON), Scott Chantler (Northwest Passage, Tek Jenson), Erik Kim (Owl Magazine), and Teacher/Artist Dave Watkins.
The panel was an excellent talk about the benefits of using comics to teach children. Several studies were brought up about comics vs prose books in stimulating reading.
Dave Watkins talked about his experience in using comics in the classroom. Jenn Stewart talked about her Comics in the Classroom project in helping teachers and librarians choose comics.
Scott Chantler and Eric Kim talked about their work which is being read by children and about the sequential art in general as compared to other mediums.
Some of the audience members were teachers and librarians.

Sequential Art on the Internet: Webcomics (46.2mb, 50:30)
On the panel were webcomic creators Andy B., Ramon Perez, Michael Cho (all from Transmission X) and Lar De Souza (Least I Can Do and Looking for Group).
The group talked about making money from webcomics and marveled over Lar De Souza's work that sprung from making webcomics. Cho talked about the benefits of cutting out the middlemen and dealing direct with the consumer. Another topic was about giving the content away for free and if that leads to sales when it comes to print collections.
The panel was moderated by Ty Buttars.

Darwyn Cooke's Next Frontier (40.9mb, 44:43)
Darwyn talked his upcoming fill in issue on Jonah Hex and how it came about (it involves alcohol),
his year of doing conventions and commissions, a bit about how important San Diego is to a lot of
artists is in terms of yearly income, his upcoming personal graphic novel and teases to his future
project which will be announced at San Diego. He also talked a bit about the comic market in terms of
black and white books vs colour in and outside of the direct market. Panel is moderated by Mark Askwith.

John Bell's Invaders From The North: Canadians and Comics (34.3mb, 37:30)
Author/Historian John Bell talks with two Hall of Fame Inductee's Pierre Fournier and Stanley Berneche about their careers in the
Canadian Comics Industry. Pierre Fournier created a satirical superhero comic, Les Aventures Du Capitaine Kebec and worked on magazines Croc and Titanic over a 15 year period.
Stanley Berneche worked on a counter culture humor magazine called Fuddle Duddle and created Captain Canada, also a satirical superhero feature.

Men of Iron Panel / Sketch off (56mb, 61:03)
David Michelinie, Bob Layton and Mike Grell talk about Iron Man and the role of a freelancer in dealing
with editors. Layton and Michelinie had not seen each other for 7 years prior to the panel. While the panel
took place, Grell and Layton did sketches of Iron Man which then given away via a draw. Panel was moderated by
Blake Bell.

Romita Sketch off / Q & A Panel (58mb, 63:03)
John Romita Sr. and Jr. do sketches but also answer question from the audience. The range of questions touched every base, from John Sr.'s earliest days with Stan Lee, Joe Maneely and Bill Everett, to John Jr.'s emotions while working on the 9/11 Amazing Spider-Man book.

DC Comics Panel (47mb, 51:15)
Moderated by Blake Bell, the panel includes a variety of talent working for DC. Included is Dale Eaglesham, Frank Quitely, J. Torres, Karl Kerschl, Chris Sprouse and Paul Dini on the dais for a full-filled hour of talk about the "Company Event" syndrome, deadlines, crowd scenes, and Zuda comics!

Marvel Q & A Panel (44mb, 48:07)
Moderated by CB Cebulski and a short appearance by World War Hulk writer Greg Pak. They open up the floor to the audience for general Q & A. Many answers are given including some interesting information about the level of involvement that Brian Michael Bendis and Warren Ellis have in their books after they've written the script.

Make Mine Manga! Panel (48mb, 51:54)
Moderated by Lianne Sentaur who is a Manga re-writer and worked for TokyoPop and Viz. Panelist were: Bryan Lee O'Malley, Becky Cloonan, Svetlana Chmakova, Jason Thomson and Paul Gravett. A lively panel with Lianne giving good questions and the panel popped some common beliefs about Manga. Among them was the influence Americans had on the Japanese and how far back the Japanese had influenced American artists. Gravett brought up that Frank Miller is an Manga inspired artist, incorporating Goseki Kojima's work.

WebComics Panel (50mb, 49:03)
Moderated by Ed Mathews. Panelist were: Chris Hastings, R. Stevens, Meredith Gran, Matt Forsythe, Danielle Corsetto, Rob Coughler, Ryan North, Joe Santoro, Jeffrey Rowland.
Among the topics were digital vs. print, making money from the web comic, other ways of doing webcomics (Zuda, Groups like ACT-IV-ATE, etc.) how long before they could quit their day job, how helpful are mainstream news articles about webcomics vs small blogs, what it's like having to live directly off their customers and not having any middle men and more.

Spotlight on Evan Dorkin and Sarah Dyer (56mb, 60:56)
Moderated by Chip Zdarsky. Poor, poor Chip. He did his research, came up with some intelligent questions and tried to do a serious panel. But this is Evan Dorkin we're talking about. He went into stand up comedian mode and started making fun of Chip. He talked a mile a minute and all along his cute little daughter would spit raspberry's into the microphone which made everybody laugh. Toward the end of the panel Dorkin told some funny stories about some run-in's he had with comic retailers.

Spotlight on Paul Pope and James Jean (48mb, 52:21)
Moderated by Chris Butcher. James Jean did a presentation of some of his artwork that will be coming out in a book later this year. Some of it was for an animation project that never got off the ground and some of it was just stuff he drew for himself. Paul Pope talked about illustration as well and they both talked a bit about the comic work they've done.

Graphic Novels in Bookstores Panel (41mb, 44:38)
This was focused on traditional prose book publishers and their entry into the graphic novel market. On the panel was Hope Larson, Carla Speed McNeil, Kean Soo, Raina Telgemeier and it was moderated by Scott Robins. There was a lot of talk about the learning curve book publisher editors are going through with Graphic Novels. Many of them don't realize the amount of time it takes to create one and give artists extremely tight deadlines, which quite often can't realistically be met. They also talked about Agents, new material vs. adaptations and more.

Vertigo/MINX Sneak Peak Panel (52mb, 56:25)
Panel hosted by Vertigo/MINX editor Shelly Bond. With her was Cecil Castellucci, writer of the first MINX book The Plane Janes. Part way through DC / Vertigo editor Joan Hilty joins the panel.

Dan Slott Panel (92mb, 100:00)
Dan Slott talks about writing comics and breaking into the big two. He also tells some funny stories about his time working for Marvel.

Carmine Infantino Panel (42mb, 45:58)
Comic Legend Carmine Infantino does a Q & A panel answering questions about his career and thoughts on the industry. Also on the panel is J. David Spurlock, publisher of Infantino's biography.

Roman Dirge Panel (41 mb, 44:21)
Roman Dirge is the creator behind the cult hit Lenore Comic Book. He gets interviewed, answers some fan questions. He tells a bunch of funny, embarrassing stories about himself. He also talks about his father and how he scared the daylights out of him repeatedly as a child.

Phone Interview - Tony Tallarico 2006 (July 2nd). (28 mb, 30:00)
Tony Tallarico is a Golden/Silver Age artist known for some oddball comics. He would create the first black solo title comic book title (Lobo, a western comic from Dell)
and do some political parody comics that got major mainstream press in the 60s.

Ramona Fradon panel. (51 mb, 55:44)
Starts with an introduction by Liana K and with a speech by Heidi MacDonald. Janet Heatherington interviews Silver Age artist Romana Fradon about her work.
She's best known for her co-created characters Metamorpho and Aqualad.

I've included audio mp3 recordings of the awards. They are available in two formats:The entire event (78 mb, 85:26)

Or broken up into pieces:

Rob Salem and Rick Green hosted the awards. They were quite funny and did a great job. Founder of the Joe Shuster Awards James Waley gives a small speech. Then the keynote speaker Gerard Jones spoke a bit about Joe Shusters family origins and a bit about the origins of the comic book industry.Rob Salem, Rick Green, James Waley and Gerard Jones (16 mb, 17:09)

Ed the Sock and Liana K dressed up as Golden Age Flash and Power Girl. They did it as a joke to the new initials of the the awards: JSA. They did a funny skit and presented the award for Harry Kramer Award for Outstanding Comic Book Retailer Award. The award went to Strange Adventures of Halifax, Nova Scotia. Owner Calum Johnston accepted the award.
Honourable mention was given to runner-up Happy Harbour Comics & Toys of Edmonton, Alberta. It's owners are Jay Bardyla & Shawna Roe.Harry Kramer Award for Outstanding Comic Book Retailer Award - Ed the Sock and Liana K, Calum Johnston (10 mb, 10:47)